


Parking

by InspiredParadox



Category: Family Guy
Genre: Angst, Drama, Family, M/M, Romance, Time Skips, Time Travel, dogxbaby, nonlinear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-22 15:37:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 40,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InspiredParadox/pseuds/InspiredParadox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Stewie was just a baby, he fell in love with Brian. It was a love that would alter the course of his existence. Stewie would stop at nothing to get what he wanted- which was to keep Brian in his life, come hell or high water. Features time traveling and much to be confused about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Installment 1

**Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Family Guy and intend no copyright infringement.**

** Parking **

**Or, Time Enough**

            The clock tower that loomed above Quahog Park never kept proper time; as thirty-year-old Stewart Gilligan Griffin advanced through the park entrance at a leisurely stroll, it struck five o’clock, when it had really been that time fifteen minutes ago, when he’d clocked out of work. The day was warm, but overcast, and combined with the warmth, the considerable cloud cover gave it a distinctly oppressive feel. It was autumn, and all around him, as far as the eye could see, nature seemed to have been burnt by the season. Summer cooks, and fall bears the burden of that roasting, frying, and broiling: some of its leaves were red, as though still aflame from the heat of the previous season, some yellow, blanched by it, and still others were darkened to sable, charbroiled by it, robbed of all vibrancy. 

A typical fall, complete with those pesky Leafers- the obnoxious urban invaders besieged various parts of the park today, snapping pics of the spellbinding miracle of nature that was leaves changing color, _the same way they did every damn fall, that only came in a handful of hues and that they apparently just didn’t have bloody enough of back in the freakin’ Big Apple_. This typical autumn was part of what had been a typical year for lil ol’ Quahog, a point on Earth that time- like any breath of significant culture or sophistication, Stewie reflected with a well-worn, comfortable cynicism- seemed to leave for the most part untouched. Stewie had lived here all his life, his family was still here, too, and practically all of the businesses that had been around from the time that he was a baby were yet operational. And Quahog’s local seasonal traditions, the same every year. With the fall came the Leafers. With the winter came the giant Christmas tree and nativity scene in the center of town. With the spring came the circus. With the summer, the celebration down on the beach to commemorate the founding of the town.

As Stewie wandered, he doffed his chocolate brown twill jacket, swung it over his arm to carry, and let his mind wander also. It wandered to various minutiae of his life, errands he needed to run, tasks that he had to accomplish. There was a utility bill he needed to remember to pay before he went into work tomorrow. He’d promised to bake a pie for the next Junior League- of which he was the only male member- meeting. His daughter needed a check mailed to her at her snooty boarding school for a trip she and the other honor students were taking to Rome, of all places, as reward for their academic triumphs. Man, that school was going to kill his bottom line…

            When he came out of his trance, he conferred with his watch and the information he obtained from doing so caused him to utter a quiet curse in annoyance. He at once pivoted slickly on a loafer-shod foot and strode briskly back in the direction from whence he’d come, after a minute leaving the path and cutting across the grass, over the dying, not-so-green green, to make a shortcut to his car which was parked alongside the curb outside the boundaries of the park.

            He was late for Sunday dinner with the family.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

            At twenty-three, an exceptionally hammered Stewie had dialed Lois in the wee hours one morning about a month after graduating college to inform her that all the years he’d spent studying physics and mechanical engineering, and the expensive education his parents had helped pay for, had been wasted time and money when what he really wanted to be was a veterinarian.

            “You want to be a vet? Huh? Since when? You’ve never really been an animal person. I don’t recall you paying much attention to our pets when you were growing up.”

             Stewie didn’t reply, only breathed heavily into the receiver.

            “Stu, honey, you’re drunk. All kind of strange ideas come to you when you’re drunk. You don’t want to be a vet.”

            “H-hey, don’t-don’t you tell me what I want!” Stewie slurringly, angrily retorted. “You don’t know any- anything about me! You-you’ve never known me, you stupid cow! And now- and now you’re trying to tell me what to- what to do with my life? How can you? H-How can you…when you…squat- when you don’t know squat- I want to help animals!”

            “Stu, you’re drunk,” Lois said again. “In the morning, if you remember this conversation, if you even remember having had the idea of wanting to be a vet, you’ll laugh and wonder what you were thinking. It’s not what you really want to do.”

It would turn out that she was right.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

            When Stewie was seventeen, he’d caught pneumonia and almost died. Well, the ‘almost died’ part was according to the doctors. It had never seemed as bad as all that to him. It was what came after he was “out of danger”, the side effect that accompanied his recovery process, and then lingered for several miserable weeks, that was much, much worse.

            When he’d fallen ill, he’d been on a guys’ trip to his grandfather’s hunting cabin in Vermont (god, that sounded gay, even to his ears) with Carter, Peter, and Chris. He should have realized that maybe, sneaking out while everyone else was asleep to take a solo midnight kayak ride and contemplate the universe- in the very early spring, when the nighttime temperature dipped to almost freezing, and you weren’t the most accomplished paddler- wasn’t such a fabulous plan. Because one might end up upsetting their kayak in some rough, choppy, _frigid_ water, and have to walk some five miles back to their grandfather’s hunting cabin with his clothes and hair sopping wet, coughing, sniffling, and shivering violently, the symptoms of his illness showing through already.

            While he was sick, he had “fever dreams”. They were unlike any dreams Stewie had theretofore dreamt; hallucinogenic, all full of hot, brutal, swirling colors, sharp-edged, violent-seeming shapes and a feeling of disorientation.

            Even after he was discharged and returned home he continued to have them. He‘d wake from them feeling cold and clammy and viciously trembling. Sometimes with silent rivulets of tears sliding down his cheeks. Always nauseated, occasionally unable to exercise mind over matter enough to hold back the vomit. One such time when he couldn’t avoid getting up to wretch into the toilet, he’d woken his mother and in his moment of weakness, confessed that he’d had a bad dream. Along with this ill-advised divulgence, he also confessed that he was miserable, although he didn’t reveal the cause of that misery. However, leaving that part out wasn’t exactly withholding valuable information, because she already knew what had driven her son into such deep despondency, and had known it for awhile.

            She asked him repeatedly, almost every day for about a month after that, whether he’d intended to commit suicide when he‘d gone into the river. She always was an intolerably nosy, illogical twit. His repeated, emphatic denials were not taken seriously, and she watched him like a hawk during that time. The pesky wench had only backed off with her laser-focused vigilance when he’d forced himself back into the mainstream, socializing and hanging out with friends again: which is what she’d really been wanting, anyway, even before his accident.

And yet,even today, more than a decade later, he’d be willing to stake a substantial amount of money that she still believed he’d tried to do away with himself back then.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

Born a super genius as he was, Stewie’s life was never going to be very much like the average person’s. Many milestones in his life were naturally going to be vastly  different than those in the lives of most every other person on the planet. But there were some ways in which he was a lot like others. He’d lost his virginity in a car, for example. Not in high school, not on prom night, but still. It was something commonplace, that had happened to scores of other people, one of the rare clichés of life he could relate to.

            While he reveled in this fact, he also, however, derived satisfaction from what had been unique about his own rite of passage in the back of a car. Such as, there were certain disadvantages about choosing that location that hadn’t applied to _them._ The interior of the car wasn’t cramped to _them_. Their small forms had been able to writhe and thrash around without much impediment to their frenzied movements. Unlike for most people, it wasn‘t a very uncomfortable place for a tryst for the two of them. Except when he’d almost been rolled over on top of the gear shift and had to quip, “Easy there. I think double penetration is a little much for my first time.”

            It happened when he was two years old.

            “God, I can’t believe everything that happened to us today!” Brian exclaimed, even though he and Stewie had gone through much more outrageous, implausible shit together than that day’s debacle. Not that getting caught up in a terrorist dispute that had Stewie’s dangerous chemical elements dealer from the farmer’s market on one side (along with Stewie, dressed as a harem girl and running interference, charming the opposition into a false sense of security; and Brian who’d inadvertently wandered upon the scene, but had undeniably come in handy as an extra hand on a trigger) and a bunch of Muslim extremist guys from Yusuf’s home country who were irate about their former cohort’s shifting sympathies on the other wasn’t pretty damn harrowing.

            But it would take Stewie time and distance to fully realize just how outlandish many of the events in his life had been.

            They were sitting together in Brian’s car, parked next to the curb, about a block away from the park where this had all gone down not half an hour ago. It was past dinnertime, which they’d missed, and the sun was coming on to set, but they- mostly Brian- needed a moment to regroup before they returned to the house. Stewie was still dressed in drag: a full, semi-sheer skirt paired with a belly-baring top with short, puffy sleeves.

            Brian took a drink from a flask he’d obtained from the glove compartment.

            “Wow, you keep one of _those_ in there?” Stewie spoke in awe, not marveling, but disapproving, and inside feeling a flicker of worry. He elbowed Brian in the ribs. “And you say you’re not an alcoholic.”

            Brian ignored him.

            “I’m getting too old for these kinds of things, Stewie,” the canine stated after taking another large swig. His tone was almost reproachful.

            “You know I didn’t mean for you to get dragged into this,” Stewie told him, sympathetic, but not really caring for Brian’s victim act. You could never tell when he was going to dust that old chestnut off, but when he did, it was often at the most inconvenient of times, and you were in for a heck of a lot of mollifying. “I guess these sort of scenarios are just something you have to deal with when you’re friends with somebody like me, who is going to have the occasional violent showdown with evil-minded enemies. That’s simply how it is. But how was I to know you’d show up looking for me, to take me back home, because Lois wanted to know where I was at, and you didn’t want to admit you’d let me go off on my own? I think it should go without saying, Brian, but I would never _want_ you in the middle of a dangerous situation.”

            “Words,” said Brian blackly, unmoved. “But nice ones.” He drank deep from his flask.

            Stewie heaved a sigh in exasperation. He unbuckled himself from his car seat and walked over to Brian’s side of the vehicle, standing on the dog’s seat. “Shove over. I’m driving.”

            Brian frowned at him. “Fat chance!”

            “Well, then, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to relinquish the hooch right away. I’ll be damned if I’ll let you drive drunk and possibly kill one or both of us.”

            “ _Oof!”_ groaned Brian as Stewie clambered gracelessly aboard the dog’s lap, landing a little hard on one of his legs. “I think you did something to my femur…Stewie, get the hell off of me!”

            Stewie made a grab for the flask. Brian tried to keep it out of reach of the child, but at last Stewie was able to grasp the dog’s wrist with over hand and knock the flat pewter bottle out of Brian’s paw with the other. It flew out the window. Both Brian and Stewie gazed out and saw the remaining alcohol dribbling out of the flask and onto the pavement.

            They looked at each other. Stewie was still sitting in Brian’s lap.

            “There’s a place in France…” the young child sang, stretching his arms up above his head, palms, together, and moving his hips around, alternating a side-to-side and circular motion.

            The dog was giving him a standard issue Brian bored and annoyed look.

            “…where the women where no pants…” Stewie continued.

            Brian’s expression did not alter. “Stewie, c’mon, get off me.”

            The boy frowned. “I don’t understand why you’re behaving like this. You were never really in the line of fire today. You consistently put _yourself_ in risky positions more than I’ve ever put you. What with the drug use, the excessive drinking, the bottled-up depression, and trolling the town for random skanks to hook-up with in your search for _luuurrrve_. If this new cautious attitude of yours is going to carry over into those areas of your life, I’m all for it. I was so happy today when you went and hid behind that Porta Potti! And that sniper-shot you fired from behind there, that incapacitated that one terrorist so the Stewie clone I’d brought along with me for backup could finish him off? That was a real good job, buddy. I love it when you have your badass moments. You handled yourself handsomely; it was most impressive, Brian.” He delivered the praise in a fairly flirty manner. Brian ignored this, which was also a pretty standard issue Brian reaction. The dog always ignored Stewie’s advances if it was at all possible. And on the occasions when he couldn’t _totally_ ignore it, he’d treat it like Stewie’d just made a joke, then change the subject.

            “I don’t care about being a badass,” the dog declared irritably. “I just want to live a calm, normal life, for god’s sake! I get that I can’t have that around the house when everybody’s there, but I know from experience that _you_ actually _do_ have some sense, Stewie, I just wish you’d use it a little more often. And hey, maybe I don’t like to see someone who looks exactly like you, running around and getting hurt, either. If you never create another clone that has to be killed off in some gruesome way, it’ll be too soon for me.”

            “He was barely even alive to begin with!” Stewie protested. “It’s not like he had any hopes or dreams! He was created just to be a decoy, and basically the only thing his brain was wired to know how to do was point and shoot. And take a bullet- or fifty- if need be. Would you rather it’d been _me_ who was shot? He had a purpose in life…just one…and he served it.”

            “And you don’t see anything wrong with intentionally creating a life just so you can destroy it?”

            “Look, if it’ll help for me to say I’m sorry, than alright. I’ll do it, and I’ll mean what I say.” Stewie looked his best friend full in the face and spoke with heartfelt sincerity. “Sorry.”

            Brian sighed. He still appeared a little frustrated with the boy, but his face softened, and he seemed on the brink of letting matters drop.

            Stewie began humming the melody of the song he’d been singing before, reprising the hip movements, writhing in Brian’s lap to the music.

            This time, the dog chuckled at his little buddy’s antics.

            “…and the men walk around,” Stewie sang, “with their wienies-”

            Then, suddenly, Brian released a chuckle that wasn’t very much like a chuckle, but more like a grunt, and snapped his hips forward. And Stewie felt something poke him, and subsequently felt by the sudden tension in the dog’s body that Brian _knew_ that the child had felt it.

            Brian drew back from his young friend hastily, his expression struck dumb by apparent horror. He wouldn’t encounter Stewie’s eye as he fumblingly picked the child up and returned him to the passenger seat. The dog then slid back over to his own side of the car, sitting unmoving and unspeaking.

            Many elongated seconds passed before the first sign of reanimation; he didn’t say anything, but he did punch the steering wheel.

            Stewie could feel the waves of embarrassment Brian was exuding. He was pretty embarrassed himself - as well as a whole host of other things. He guessed that the predominant emotion was probably _shocked._ Either that, or turned-on. Or thrilled.

            The boy debated his options. He could mock Brian ruthlessly for getting hard for him. It seemed greatly to be preferred over the sensitive approach of just acting like nothing had happened, allowing the dog to sit there and shame his erection away, drive them back to the house, and end the day more or less normally. On the other hand, play his cards right, and Stewie just might wind up getting more out of Brian’s boner than several effective punch lines.

            Casually, he ventured, “Oh, don’t worry about it, Brian. I take it as a compliment.”

            Brian turned toward the boy, but didn’t look at him. His head drooped down, and  his close-eyed expression was defeated. “I’m sure you do.”

            Stewie hesitated. He hit on Brian constantly, but mostly he just used sly little remarks and oblique hints. Offering himself to the dog in plain language occurred but rarely. It took him awhile to summon the courage to put on a nonchalant face and say what he said next.

            He shrugged.

            “Well…so what are you going to do about it?”

            Brian head snapped up and he stared with large eyes at the child before him. “What _is_ there to do about it? Don’t take it so personally, Stewie! I’m not… _attracted_ to you or anything! That’s not what this is about. I -I…we’ve just been through a life-threatening ordeal. My body just wants to prove that it’s alive, that’s all- that everything still functions.” His voice was strong and forceful. It might have covered for the weakness of the argument, had not his voice also been just a fraction too overly-defensive. “And the whole frotting on my junk didn’t help!…the i-involuntarily biological reaction!”

            “It’s totally personal!” Stewie countered spiritedly. His blood quickened, and his confidence swelled. Brian might be the animal, but it was Stewie who at that moment was smelling fear. It was fear that equaled weakness, and fear that existed _because of_ a weakness, and the little boy planned to take as much advantage of it as he could. “It’s not anybody who could do this to you, Brian. It’s this connection that we have between us that makes me have such a strong effect on you. You’re drawn to me. You do want me. Try to deny it all you like, but it was _me_ you were arguing with before you got a stiffie. You’re aroused by _me._ ” Stewie glared at the dog disparagingly, and fell back slack against his seat, seething. “At least give me due credit for what I’m doing to you.”

            He seemed to infuriate Brian with his request.

            “What you’re _doing_ to me? Hmm…let’s see, what do you do to me?” The look the canine was giving him, the quake of fury in his words; he was more incensed than Stewie had ever seen him. “You give me migraines. You stress me out big time- god, when Lois says I have to take care of you, it’s like being a caregiver for someone as demanding and high-maintenance as Dick Cheney in a diaper, crossed with the ghost of Liberace! There’re days when you drive me absolutely freakin’ bat shit bonkers…You confuse the fuck out of me…” As Brian ranted, the fiery rage steadily drained out of his voice until it had gone sort of dangerously soft. It was then that Stewie suddenly perceived something there in addition to the anger, and he recognized this just moments before Brian lunged forward onto Stewie’s seat and drew the boy close, as though hugging him, though the embrace was neither affectionate nor tender. Stewie’s cheek was pressed against Brian’s chest, and Brian’s chin was on Stewie’s shoulder.

            “Do you even _understand_ what you’re doing to me? This isn’t some game, Stewie… _This_ is what you’re doing to me.”

            When Stewie felt Brian’s hard-on nudging against his leg so deliberately, the small child actually squeaked. The dog chuckled darkly into Stewie’s ear.

            “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,” Brian whispered warningly. Stewie pulled back just enough to be able to look at his canine companion. “Show me,” he breathed against Brian’s lips. “And I’ll catch on fast enough. I’m a quick study; most of us geniuses are.”

            Brian kissed him then, and Stewie’s eyes fell shut of their own accord. It was a firm, sweet pressure at first, close-lipped, not violent as the boy had been expecting. One kiss was soon followed by another. And another. A series of short, loving smooches commenced, one set of lips gently puckering and releasing on another, until Brian started nibbling on Stewie’s lower lip, and the boy opened his mouth, and all of a sudden they were sharing a kiss that was all teeth and tongues, lust-driven, wild, and desperate.

            Finally, they both simultaneously broke apart to take a breather. Stewie looked down at Brian’s naked erection and a shiver shot down his spine. The sight was an intimidating one to Stewie. This desire that he held for Brian scared him sometimes. He was always sending Brian signals that he’d be quite willing to get it on with the dog anytime. But to be entirely truthful, whenever he gave it some serious thought, the idea of going all the way had more than once made him feel afraid. It was all easy-peasy, lemon squeazy in fantasyland, but in reality…

            And then Brian kissed him again, and as they held one another in their arms, kissing passionately and pressing their bodies together and rutting, losing themselves in one another, Stewie decided that he was so aroused that he just wanted something, anything… _more_ to happen. He wanted Brian closer, impossibly close. He wanted Brian within him, he did. He wanted it all.

            However, Stewie wasn’t at all positive that Brian would be the one to suggest escalating matters any further. No matter how much he obviously wanted the little boy in his arms. He had a sneaking suspicion that, despite Brian’s seductive word of warning, there was probably some internal code of honor that the dog possessed which said he would not defile a two-year-old innocent (or at least that he would not be the instigator). Either because of that, or simply owing to some stupid reservations Brian probably had about getting down with some hot gay sex- what implications it would have on his masculinity or some such rot- he probably wouldn’t be the one to try for more.

            So, Stewie decided to put the offer out there.

            “If you want to go inside of me, I would be okay with that,” he said baldly, as though calm and in control, when he really felt anything but. Oh, he knew he wanted this, he was quite certain. But he was too horny and too anxious to possess even a shred of calm. As for in control: he was quite happy to cede that to Brian. The dog had all the experience, of course, but it also struck Stewie as a terrifically exciting thing to do, to lay back like a virgin sacrifice, subject to all of his lover’s naughty whims.

            Brian stiffened and drew back slightly, blowing out a hot, shaky stream of air across Stewie’s forehead.

            “Thank god.”

            He undressed Stewie quickly, yanking off his cute little slippers with the curling toes, then the belly shirt followed by the skirt, and a pair of panties (pink, to match the skirt, under which they were partially visible) came next.

            As soon as he had his anticipated lover naked, Brian crawled back over to his own seat. He patted his thighs while staring lustfully at Stewie.

            “Sit in my lap again.”

            Stewie scrambled to comply with the dog’s order. “Why?” he asked, giggling. “Are you going to let me drive?” Good Lord, but it felt incredible, having his exposed flesh, the full front of him, flush right up against that lovely, heavenly soft fur.

            Brian laughed sarcastically. “Yeah, right. Like I would let you do that even if you _were_ packing something bigger than a thimble. I’d  never go along with you sodomizing me: I’m not gay.”

            “No, no, of course not. You’ve just been making out with another dude, and now you’re about to screw him in the ass, because he doesn’t have a vagina. Because he’s male. You’re a male having sex with another male. But somehow that’s not- .”

            Stewie was distracted from finishing his sentence, however, because the dog was caressing the boy’s bottom. He massaged a globe in each hand for a moment. He stopped,  lifted a finger up to his mouth, sucked on it briefly, then lowered it back down, evidently with the intention of starting the stretching process of the diminutive opening using only that little bit of saliva for lubrication. He popped the finger in. Stewie found the intrusion more than just a smidge too uncomfortable, a fact which he just couldn’t hide. He let out a long, low hiss between gritted teeth, and choked on a dry sob when the digit had gone in all the way.

            Brian immediately stopped. Removing his finger, he reached into the glove compartment, rooted around a bit, and came up with a small jar of petroleum jelly. He got back to work prepping Stewie, this time with the benefit of the petroleum coating his fingers.

            “God, you just keep everything in this ca- _ar_!” Brian’s finger had just brushed up against something inside of him that gave the boy an intense burst of pleasure. He moaned helplessly when the action was repeated, several times over, while Brian continued loosening Stewie up, adding in some twists and scissor kicks with his fingers between bliss-inducing strokes to the boy’s prostate.

            Brian must’ve pushed the button to lower the seat, but Stewie didn’t realize this until he was already flat on his back and Brian was lying on top of him, looking down, pushing Stewie’s knees up, and positioning himself.

            A moment later, the head of Brian’s member was inside Stewie, and the child temporarily forgot how to breathe.

            “Ungh,” he grunted the canine inched slowly but inexorably into him. “This is a bit... _Ow!_ ” He winced. “Brian-!”

            “Well, what did you expect? I’m being as careful as I can be.” Brian inhaled sharply, then exhaled around a groan. “Holy crap. Wow. There’s less wiggle room than in Peter’s arteries in here.” He slowly eased himself mostly out of his tight confines, before plunging back in again.

            Stewie sniffled a little, as quietly as he could, and tried to blink away the tears that were collecting in response to the raw, stinging sensation Brian was causing. “Are you telling me that you’ve fucked Peter in the arteries before? That seems really weird and sick, not to mention impossible.”

            “Don’t be facetious, Stewie. Not at a time like this.” Brian was staring down at where there bodies were joined. Stewie envied him his vantage point, if not his role in the proceedings. Even though he was still concentrating on just breathing through the pain of being stretched so wide open, he found himself thinking that it would just be like the best porn in the world to be able to watch himself being filled and almost emptied, over and over again.

            After a couple minutes or so, the discomfort of the act had almost completely worn away. The painful friction had all but disappeared, leaving behind only a smooth glide stimulating his inner walls quite pleasantly. Stewie moaned at the sensation and began jacking his hips to match Brian’s thrusts. The dog grunted his approval.

            “Ahhhh, yeeeaahhh, _just_ like that…”

            “If that is your wish… _Master,”_ Stewie purred, putting on a female voice and playing up his appearance as a sexy, expert gratifier of  desires, living only to please the man it had been determined he should serve.

            Brian’s nostrils flared and he stared down at the child beneath him with a sheer predatory look in his eyes. He clearly enjoyed the power trip Stewie was giving him.

            Stewie gave Brian’s member a quick squeeze with his anus muscles, causing Brian to yelp, then growl.

            “Did that please you, Master?”

            Brian whimpered and looked overwhelmed by Stewie’s submissive talk (and quite possibly the girlish voice), and the child knew that such talk was driving the dog crazy.

            “Damn it, Stewie, shut the hell up!”

            Stewie laughed evilly, pulling on Brian’s collar to bring him closer. The dog braced himself on his forearms and let his head rest between Stewie’s and the child’s shoulder, onto which droplets of drool fell as Brian panted heavily. Stewie would’ve asked his lover to stop slavering on him, but everything else was so wonderful, he decided to just give it a pass. Stewie let his fingers explore all through the fur beneath them, running them over and knitting them in the snowy softness while he kept on being fucked to within an inch of his own sanity. He only snapped temporarily out of his addled rapture when he became startled by Brian suddenly rolling them over. The canine gripped his lover under the armpits, holding the little child just above his member.

            “I’ve decided to let you steer, as long as I’m still the one doing the relevant stick work.”

            Placing his hands on Brian’s chest and using that as leverage, along with the help the dog was giving him with the grip he now had on the boy’s hips, Stewie began ascending and descending on Brian’s cock. This new position made him feel like he was performing a more active role in satisfying Brian, while also nudging against new parts of himself, adding new pleasure.

            “I like this.”

            Brian snorted and continued to thrust up into him.

            Stewie made no effort to suppress his moans, but let them out loudly. This was so beyond anything he’d ever imagined. But then, how could he have ever predicted anything like this? All his life, movies and television shows that he shouldn’t have been watching, internet sites he wasn’t supposed to be visiting, and conversations he wasn’t meant to overhear, all of them had told him that sex was amazing. And Stewie himself had in the past made uninformed remarks about various things he’d eaten being even better than having sexual relations. Well, he definitely understood what all the fuss was about now! (And no, no food he’d ever had could ever compare)

                Brian picked up his pace and rolled them again- prompting Stewie’s remark about the gear shift- and putting himself on top once more. Stewie knew things would soon come to an end; he‘d masturbated before, and knew what an imminent orgasm felt like, and all signs pointed to Brian getting close, too: his pants were coming rougher and shallower, and his thrusts were becoming more frantic and less rhythmic.        

_“Ohhhh!”_ groaned the dog. _“_ So… _fucking_ …good!”

                When Stewie came, electric spasms rocketing all throughout his body, he threw his head back and shouted Brian’s name to the skies to express his love for the dog, in addition to his thanks for the massive pleasure he was receiving because of him. Just after Stewie had reached the pinnacle of his pleasure, he felt a surge of incredible warmth as Brian erupted inside of him with a combination gasp/groan.

                He pulled out and fell down beside Stewie, his breathing labored. As the small child worked at recapturing his own, slowly an awkward feeling began to creep over him as he came back to earth. He’d felt quite content to just lie quietly next to Brian and drift off to sleep, soaked in exhaustion and warmth and love, but he didn’t know if this was proper post-coital etiquette. It started feeling like maybe he should say something. Trouble was, he had no clue what that should be at a moment like this. But then he remembered a line he’d heard from a movie one time and decided to try it out:

            “Was that as good for you as it was for me?”

            Lazy, husky laughter bubbled up from Brian’s throat.

            “Your rectum is chock-full of and leaking my ejaculate. What do you think?”

            Stewie chuckled.

            That moment of levity done with, however, Brian seemed to grow quite solemn. He pulled the baby against him tightly, holding him in a fiercely protective, possessive clinch that made Stewie extremely happy.

            The next day had proceeded normally, like any other. Stewie woke up at home, in the new racecar bed he’d recently gotten to trade his crib in for since he was so grown up now. Brian had evidently driven them both home and put Stewie to bed. Not long after he awakened, Lois entered and dressed him for the day and took him downstairs to breakfast. Everyone else was at the table already, including Brian. And the dog behaved just as usual through the duration of the morning meal. He didn’t act distant from everyone else, sit silent and aloof, or refuse to enter into conversation with any of the family. He didn’t act embarrassed, or try to avoid Stewie’s eye, although when their gazes did happen to make contact a few times, Brian’s was strangely blank. The Fat Man went to work and Chris and Meg went to school and Lois went next door to visit with Bonnie so the two of them could shop for shoes online together or something, when the redheaded harlot _should_ have been taking care of the damn house instead, since she was an alleged homemaker. But no matter. It worked toward Stewie’s gain, anyway. He went into the living room and found his lover from the previous night alone on the couch.

            Stewie went and sat down beside the dog and said, “I know how you are, Brian. I know you have all these cockamamie notions about me still being this wide-eyed, susceptible, naive little kid, who isn’t ready to experience all of the adult world yet, even though I’m far from being an archetype of my peer group. Do you feel guilty about what happened at all?”

                And Brian had this to say to him: “The moment it was over with, I stopped wondering if it would damage you. Would warp you. I could never warp you as much as you’ve warped me.”

_To be continued…_

 


	2. Installment 2

**Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Family Guy and intend no copyright infringement.**

            **Parking**

**Or, Time Enough**

**Installment 2**

 

            Stewie was not close to his parents, but the relationship could be worse. They lived two blocks away from each other, Peter and Lois in the same yellow house with the teal roof on Spooner Street that they’d raised their kids in, Stewie a mere three blocks over in a Tudor-style home he and his family had moved into a little more than five years ago. He loved his house; it was the refuge, a place of- without getting too elegiacal and self-pitying about it- sanctuary his childhood home had never been. It was done-up and furnished in impeccable style, if he did say so himself. Although he didn’t have to- more than enough other people had complimented him on his decorating abilities, thank you very much. It contained a sun room, spacious rec room, chef’s kitchen (behind one of the walls in which stood a state-of-the-art lab for him to conduct his experiments and develop new technology in), dining room, family room, two and a half baths, and three bedchambers- the master, the one belonging to his daughter whenever she stayed there, and the guest chamber.   

            The day he moved into the house, while he was unpacking the china and other fine tableware for the dining room, he’d found a letter- a yellowing, tattered sheet of notebook paper stuffed inside a small crystal decanter. What on earth had it been doing in there?

            _You never did fucking understand, did you?_

            _No matter how decent you always were to people, no matter how refined your sense of fair play in most matters, the way you liked to pride yourself on doing the “right” thing…how good of a person can you be when you’re so ready- again and again- to throw over the one who loves you most?_

            He remembered when he wrote it, remembered what his frame of mind had been then. The ghost of the mood seemed to take up residence in its former abode of his chest with a cold, empty grasping feeling like a specter’s hand squeezing his heart, and for a minute, try as he might, he could not shake it off. Alone in the room, in the house, _too far_ into that house, in that windowless room, it was too easy to start reliving things, to forget that life was so much different now. He decided to take a break from emptying boxes. He took a goblet with him and walked to the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of red wine, sat down at the table, and looked through the picture window opposite out upon a gorgeous, comfortingly sunny day. Over his new front lawn, immaculately trimmed and landscaped. It didn’t take long for his desolate mood to subside.

            It was all such ancient history. It didn’t matter anymore.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

            At the very beginning, Brian told him that what had begun in desperation would end that way, too. Stewie had merely laughed off the dog’s dramatic attitude. It was just like Brian to be a downer, to cop a cynical attitude about something that actually offered true potential to make him happy. Of course with all the women he’d been with he’d hoped for the best. Be they ever so blatantly, laughably wrong for him, he always found some way to imagine a happily ever after with each one of them in turn. But his relationship with Stewie, his clear soul mate, he treated as if it was passing madness. Well, if that’s what it took…

            Nothing was ever romanticized much. Their relationship hadn’t undergone too material a change after the addition of sex had made its way into the mix. They were friends, at the core, and while Stewie would’ve swooned to have Brian treat him more like a love interest than just a fuck buddy, the child was still immensely thankful for what he had. They’d be hanging out, just like always, doing some mundane, time-killing thing, when seemingly out of nowhere, the mood would strike; they’d look at each other and they wouldn’t be able to deny the urge. And they’d have to have at it on the spot- or else get somewhere, if they were out, where it was acceptable and private enough to go at it like a couple of nymphomaniacs. And they basically were- for each other.

            For Stewie, it was his little slice of heaven, this illicit… _thing_ they’d struck up after the first time they’d so spontaneously made love. The stolen hours in which they could be together were not difficult to come by. Peter and Lois trusted Brian entirely, and Stewie had always been often left alone in the canine’s care. Them spending enormous quantities of time together was nothing new, nothing unusual.

            After the night of their first sexual encounter, while their together time would often consist of the normal things such as jaunts to the park or for ice cream, it was also made up of lots of hooking up - on the couch, in Stewie’s bed, in the tub, on the kitchen table, a couple more times in Brian’s car. In his parents’ bed once, but Brian had acted all freaked out and tortured after and told Stewie never again.

            And he and Brian took trips not just because of some extraordinary and implausible mission of Stewie’s that needed to be carried out. Which was not to say they didn’t sometimes _involve_ such a thing, but while they were away from the house anyway- with a good, credible pretense or a cover-up, such as the Brian and Stewie robots, for their absences established- they’d take the opportunity to get a hotel room. Then, when the mission- or play or concert, sometimes these dalliances were merely pleasure-bent minibreaks- was through, they’d come back there and fuck like crazy on every surface of it, just like they did when at home.

But Stewie was a toddler. Brian was a dog. Certain things came along with the territory of being two such individuals. It should have occurred to Stewie that it couldn’t last. Definitely. But somehow, stupidly, it hadn’t.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

“So…” Lois began, opening their once weekly dinner conversation as a family while she strode with a steaming casserole dish full of something goopy and grey with crusty edges into the dining room. She placed it down with the rest of the food, then claimed her seat, she and Peter making bookends at either end of the long, rectangular table. “…how was everybody’s weekend?”

            “Pretty good,” Chris responded, ladling heaping mounds of every food available onto his plate. The rest of the family waited for him to say more, but he was apparently done with his reply and was now solely occupied with chowing down.

            Meg cleared her throat noisily. Stewie glanced idly in her direction and saw her looking eager and quite pleased with herself. She obviously had some news to impart. She leaned forward in her seat and announced happily, “It’s all settled now, Carl and I are going to rent that timeshare in Acapulco this winter. We’re-”

            “Meg, don’t interrupt your brother!” Lois scolded harshly, then turned back towards Chris. She smiled and prompted him with a nod. “What were you saying, sweetie?” 

            Chris looked around the table them all, cheeks bulging from a full mouth, cock-eyed, and even more vacant-looking than usual. He swallowed, audibly as well as visibly, and  twiddled his thumbs as he thought, his expression pained.

            “Um, well…let’s see…what’s been going on with me lately…uh…hmm…Oh! I had hard poos the other day and had to go to the doctor…”

            Ah, Chris. Who Stewie had the most consistently amicable relationship with out of anyone at this table. Who he, as he had last night, actually, attended the occasional hockey game with (Chris had played in an amateur league for a period after high school and Stewie…well Stewie liked the bloodshed).

            Chris’s artistic ambitions, passionate though they were, were derailed long ago, and he now made a nice enough living with the landscape company that he owned. It was an occupation that gave him the creative outlets of choosing the types, colors, and placement of various flora and topiary design, while still probably not being wholly fulfilling to him. But at least all his years of being ogled by Herbert while doing yard work for the old pedophile had paid off in him learning a trade.

            He actually _had_ a modicum of talent, so being a professional artist wasn’t a totally preposterous thing to aspire to, but the problem was, having merely above average skills didn’t cut it when one didn’t have the right connections, and there were people out there who were truly magnificently gifted and still never got anywhere. Well, as is often said, ‘ _those who cannot do, teach’_. That had been Chris’s plan for a moment until the realization came that he’d have to get a degree in order to do that and there was no way in hell he was going to graduate college. _Maybe_ community college, but that didn’t get you teaching credentials.

            Meg had achieved beyond what anyone had predicted for her and become a doctor- well, a foot doctor. Stewie supposed that none of them should have been surprised, though, when this happened, because women like Meg loved feet. He’d never met one woman of her physicality who couldn’t wait to go shoe shopping, because they were the one article of clothing that she need never be ashamed to try on. It’s not as though she can control the size of her _feet_ , after all. Anyway, Meg, too, was doing okay in the career department.

             She was thrice married, but had no children. That- that failure of Meg’s to breed, instead of being considered a public service as it would be in the eyes of any sane person, (because what would two such aesthetically-challenged, boorish drips produce together? Stewie didn’t have the strongest background in genealogy, but the odds couldn’t be good), had made her a catastrophe of a human being in Lois’s eyes, more than any other action or quality of her daughter’s had before. Lois was ravenous to have more children around the house, in a way that always reminded Stewie of the witch in _Hansel and Gretel_. She’d also expressed some concern in the past that Meg might be following in her aunt Carol’s footsteps by becoming a serial married. Stewie, however, tended to hold the divergent viewpoint that it was nothing short of miraculous that that dowdy little heifer had somehow gotten no less than three men to marry her.

            And things seemed to be going relatively well with hubby number three. Who was a friend of Chris’s- Carl, the obese, distinctly uncharismatic cineaste, who to this day worked at the Quahog Mini Mart.

            As Chris continued to go into detail about his minor, though majorly disgusting, medical problem, Lois, in what was a perfect, true example of what she’d falsely accused and reprimanded her daughter for, cut him off and said to Stewie,

            “How’s our dear little Brianne? School going well for her?”

            “Oh, of course,” Stewie replied, a trifle braggy, proud beyond what’s called for, like any good parent. “Last time I talked to her, she’d just won the school-wide grammar bee. School-wide, and she’s seven.” A vision of his little girl, with her head shaped almost the same way as his own, but a little less wide; and the big blue eyes set into it, the abundance of blonde hair on top of it, and her nearly perpetually jaded expression danced before his mind’s eye, and he smiled to himself. “Hardly surprising, considering her parentage.”

            “She’s got two smart cookies for folks, that’s for sure.” Lois beamed up the table at him.

            Stewie swallowed down the bit of bile that had risen in his throat at her saccharine tone and replied, “Well, I was thinking primarily of myself, but yes.”

Stewiewould have to be way imperceptive not to be cognizant of the fact that he held the dubious distinction of being his mother’s favorite child. However, he also realized the reason Lois was so complimentary, oftentimes even obsequious to him, had much to do, again, with the issue of _grandchildren_. Even though Brianne went to boarding school, Lois still saw _her_ more than the grandkids she’d gotten from Chris. They lived all the way in California, and only made the trip out to Rhode Island a handful of times a year. They were the products of a short-lived marriage the hefty blonde had had with some floozy bar hag who’d then fled across country with the kids one day while Chris was out of town working on redoing Carter and Bab’s (rest their crusty old souls) garden on their estate in Newport, thus signifying that she wanted to end things. Her actions had left devastated Chris for a good long while, but happily he’d bounced back and learned to cope well as time went by.

“Anything else interesting happen to any of you lately?” Lois inquired of her fellow dinners interestedly, almost desperately. As she always did.

            The youngest Griffin present sighed and repeated one of the variations of a point he was wont to make on an extremely regular basis. “Face it, Mother. It’s like I’ve been telling you for eons. We have these dinners every week. You can’t reasonably imagine that every time we’ll have these fascinating updates on our lives to regale you with, when there’s simply only so much that happens to any of us in the interim.

            “Pfft!” said Peter. “Says you. _I_ won first prize in the Senior Center’s golfing tournament!” he boasted, making Stewie wonder with a tinge of pity if Peter felt that he had to compete with his own granddaughter, show that he was winning prizes, too.

            However, when Peter produced a ribbon and held it out for all to see, it clearly read ‘Honorable Mention’.           

            Stewie sarcastically toasted Peter with his water glass.

“Mazel tov to you, my dear old fellow.”

“‘Mavel tov’?” echoed Peter, crinkling his nose with an air of distaste. He directed his next words at Lois. “Lois, have you been spreading your Jew nonsense around my good Catholic children?” He demanded angrily, jabbing his fork in the air for emphasis.

“Now, Peter, don’t you start with that,” Lois said, squinting over at him forbiddingly. “I won’t have you ruining this dinner by conducting yourself like a bigot, especially toward your own wife.”

“Oh, oh, where’s this comin’ from?!” asked Peter. All of a sudden he was shouting, incensed for some inconceivable reason. “I make one little comment that you don’t like, and what? You- ya gotta start accusin’ me of having other wives? C-can you tell, me, huh, what is _with_ women, that they always gotta go there? You’re just makin’ stuff up. I- I swear, there’s no accounting for you dames, always thinking that there’s your easy out: it doesn’t matter what kinda crap _you_ pull, ‘cause the man’s cheatin’! But you forget that this is America, and I am innocent until proven guilty!”

“Peter, you’re talking about bigamy. I said _bigotry_ ,” Lois tried to explain patiently, although it was plain to see that she growing quite worked up, too.

            Peter pointed the fork at her again and shouted in a fire and brimstone voice,

“A pox! A pox on your house, Lois!”

            “It’s your house too, idiot!”

            Their absurd argument, only made more farcical when Chris and Meg started to chime in, caused Stewie to choke down the rest of his dinner in a hurry.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

Shortly after he’d recovered from his nasty bout of pneumonia, he wound up taking Susie Swanson to Prom. At the time when he’d asked her to be his date for that  massively over-hyped milestone of a high school event, he’d already made up his mind he was going to sleep with her. He’d known that she’d go along with it because she had a reputation as being easy for any guy at all, and as for him in particular…well, it was public knowledge that she’d fancied Stewie Griffin for some time.

            He remembered being with her in the back of the limo, parked in a shadowed area near a clump of trees deep into Quahog Park. He remembered how they’d started to kiss. He remembered sliding her dress straps off of her shoulders. He remembered putting his hands on her breasts and fondling them a little as he kissed her. They felt…interesting, he decided. The skin of them was soft as could be, and they were firm, yet squishy. He gave them a squeeze. Yes, he could see how they could be fun to play with, but what about them was supposed to be a turn-on, exactly? He wasn’t getting any more excited, and she didn’t seem to be either; her lips were barely moving against his now.

            He tried to move his hands in a different way on her breasts.

            “How’s that feel? You like that?” He made a valiant attempt to have a sexy tone to his voice, but in all honesty, he was thinking that he’d probably never felt less sexy in his life.

            Susie was never one to mince words: “It feels like you’re trying to tune a radio.”

            As he petulantly removed his hands from her chest, she took her turn trying to stimulate _him_ , reaching down and cupping and rubbing him through his tuxedo pants. Leaning in and giving him a long, sensual kiss, she pulled down his zipper and took him out of his underwear. His slight stiffness could just barely be called an erection, and he was fast going limper the longer she held him in her hand, ineffectually stroking a thumb up and down his organ. After the passage of a few minutes that felt like an eternity, she finally stopped, looking up into his face with an infuriating mix of frustration and pity. Without saying a word, she’d tucked him back inside his slacks and asked him to drive her home. Which she meant quite literally and not at all euphemistically. This was much to Stewie’s profound relief, even if underneath that predominant feeling he also felt quite mortified. He didn’t think Susie would tell anyone of his monumental failure tonight [it would reflect none too positively on her, either; she liked to think of herself as the ultimate high school sexpot (others might translate this as ‘whore’, and they would not be too far off the mark, but be this as it may), and often was heard to boast that she could seduce _anyone_ ]. But he was bitterly disappointed with his own lack of determination. He really thought that he’d be able to make the transition. Why didn’t he, why couldn’t he have just fantasized about being with a guy while he and Susie were fooling around? 

            Gone were the days when he was empowered by his sexuality.

            He used to wonder if the sense of triumph would ever fade, that divine sense of conquest and accomplishment brought on by taking in the sight of the dog, panting and spent, his fur matted with sweat, lying back and gazing up at him with eyes that, even clouded as they were by postcoital euphoria, radiated wonder.

            “You’re amazing, Stewie,” he would say. “So amazing.”

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

            Their fifth time having sex, Brian took him to a hotel. It was their first time doing such a thing, and Stewie was very excited to be going to a hotel with his secret lover. That night, after having been to see _Dido and Aeneas_ , they enjoyed a session of passionate screwing atop their king size bed in the Park Barrington. Stewie hadn’t taken off the scarlet beaded dress he’d worn to the opera (he hadn’t been given a chance; Brian had pounced on him as soon as they walked in the door), but simply tied the skirt up around his waist to keep it out of the way. Also, a pair of glittery high heels were yet on his feet, one of which, while he lay at an angle on the bed, was wrapped around one of the bed posts. Before they checked out in the morning, Stewie would examine with pride the indentation in the wall caused by his spike heel repeatedly striking it.

            Really the only way they could have dates in public was when Stewie was in drag. When they did this, Stewie didn’t even need to put a woman’s wig on. This was because, almost overnight, shortly after he’d turned two, he’d sprouted a shock of hair, so that by the time he and Brian first hooked up, he had quite a thicket of lush, if short, locks atop his head. When pulling a gender-bender, with the right application of makeup  and adoption of the proper vixen attitude, he was able to pull off looking like a woman with a fab, sassy, mod pixie cut easily.

            After they’d finished, Brian had gone and smoked a cigarette out on the balcony while Stewie flipped on the T.V. across from the bed and tried to get interested in an infomercial for The Genie BraÔ so he could stay awake until Brian rejoined him. Their recent activity had taken a lot out of him, and he wanted badly to go to sleep, but he waited until the dog climbed back in bed with him. He adored the feeling of  being wrapped so securely in his lover’s arms before they drifted off into dreamland.

            Stewie didn’t know how long he slept for, only that it wasn’t long enough. Seeing as how they hadn’t gotten to the hotel until around midnight, and when the child awoke, the pale light washing into the room was indicative of early in the morning, it was easy to understand why. Brian was back out on the balcony. He didn’t seem to be smoking this time. No thin, writhing, coils of clouds rose up around him like serpents.

            Stewie thought about how whenever he saw the smoke serpents, they never seemed to move around Brian ominously, but rather, in a friendly, familiar manner. He smiled to imagine Brian as a snake charmer.

            The baby yawned and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. The limited sunlight creeping into the room bathed in its soft, white gold glow a lipstick smear on a corner of the bedsheet, and he aimlessly traced the mark with a fingertip as he cleared his sleep-thickened throat and called out to his lover.

            “You’re out there again? Not trying to work up the courage to jump off, are you?”

            Brian didn’t say a word as he turned around and marched toward the bed; getting on top of it, he crawled up to Stewie, a knee on either side of his short, outstretched legs, leaning over him.

            He kissed the baby soundly.

            As the dog withdrew from the sudden, heated liplock, Stewie chuckled bemusedly and was about to ask what had brought on the abrupt burst of affection when his words were forestalled in his mouth at the sight of Brian doing something unusual. Still straddling Stewie’s legs, he climbed to his feet, standing over the baby.

            “Sit up. Open your mouth.”

Stewie was caught off guard by the request, and was close to denying it and telling the dog off, just because of Brian’s assuming attitude. Already, he’d found out that he quite liked being bossed around by Brian in the bedroom, but the fact was that Stewie knew what the canine was after, and it wouldn’t kill Brian to use some sensitivity.  After all, what he was after Stewie had never done before. Brian gave the impression that the thought hadn’t even occurred to him that Stewie might say no.

            However, he did _not_ tell Brian off, despite the dog’s arrogant presumption; the reason being that Stewie was genuinely curious to try this.

            And so the surprised and annoyed frown that had automatically formed on his face immediately following Brian’s order disappeared. Instead, the toddler sat up straight and gave the dog a devilish, lopsided grin. Brian was gripping his own growing erection; brushing the canine’s fingers away from the organ, Stewie pumped it up and down a few times before leaning forward and kissing the tip. The cock was fairly rigid, though not as stiff as a board, and it gave a twitch at the touch of Stewie’s lips. The boy then blew a stream of hot breath over it, just to see if it would twitch again- which it did.

            While his penis was quivering under Stewie’s teasing attentions, the child could tell that the rest of Brian’s body was tense, on edge, impatient. Stewie would have liked to have drawn things out, toy with Brian by bringing him to the brink of madness via the exquisite torture of gratification delayed…but that would have to wait for some other time. For now, Stewie was seized with the need to prove himself to Brian somehow, for some strange, undefined reason. The boy always held himself to rigorously high standards, and this may have been his first time performing fellatio, but he still wanted to do it perfectly. Eyeing the shaft before him determinedly, Stewie sucked in the head of this most sensitive part of his lover, and circled it with his tongue, the resultant groan from the dog feeding Stewie’s ears, which were hungry for evidence of Brian’s appreciation and enjoyment. He removed the completely hard flesh from his mouth and licked a long stripe along the side of it, then dove right back in and practically jammed the thing down his throat. It caused his gag reflux to kick in. He backed off, coughing a little and wiping the moisture from his watery eyes in frustration, then returned his mouth to the waiting cock. He was less foolhardy this time, having learned his limit, though no less committed. His mouth bobbed up and down enthusiastically, feeling the member throb in his mouth. Brian began to jerk his hips forward and back, and Stewie was able to keep up well with the pace of the thrusts. With his free hand he tenderly massaged the inside of the dog’s thigh. This went on for maybe a minute; then, cursing himself for needing to take a break, Stewie momentarily released Brian’s shaft and swallowed a good gulp of air before turning once more to his lover’s member and plunging it down his throat as deep as he was able without choking, pulling back, doing it again. The hand that gripped the base of the dog’s shaft was drenched in precum and saliva.

            Brian panted loudly and grunted almost rhythmically through clenched teeth with every oral ministration that Stewie performed. The baby dragged his tongue slowly and firmly along the underside of the cock before taking the member in far as he could again and sucking for all he was worth.

            “Oh, Stewie-! Coming… _coming_ -!”

            A second later, he did come, indeed.

            “ _Awwwwhhhh, yeah!”_

            Instinctively, Stewie pulled back on the cock until just the head was in his mouth, so that the orifice wasn’t taken up with too much of Brian’s member to be able to accommodate the cum that flooded it. He kept that head in his mouth as he swallowed down as much of Brian’s release as he could; though when his mouth became a little too full and some of it drooled out, he was obliged to let even the head go. Brian shot off a bit more that landed a little south of his collarbone. As the baby sat there in the aftermath of the act he’d just performed, he blushed heavily, feeling the spattering of his lover’s essence all down his chin and an additional ribbon or two on his chest, which had just barely avoided getting on his low-cut dress.

            Brian clumsily  brought both shaking legs over to the same side of Stewie’s torso and collapsed to that side of the boy. With the groan of one who is totally spent, he hoisted himself into a sitting position, his back propped against the headboard. He patted the baby on the chin. “You’re so amazing,” he said, breath still a little hoarse. “So amazing.”

               

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

 

            Six-year-old Stewie stepped out of his time machine and into his bedroom. He was light-headed and weary, and a dull but persistent pain pulsed behind his eye.

            Here he was, back again in this moment of time, on the day of reckoning- the day he conducted the experiment to end all experiments- which had so far been a failure every time he’d attempted it. On this day when the house was quiet and still, as befitted a house in mourning.

            Their mourning was a bit premature. But with the condition that Brian was in as he lay weak and emaciated down the hall in Peter and Lois’s room, almost too tired to raise his head to look at you with hauntingly dim, glassy eyes… it was probably inevitable that they all assumed that the final moments would come sooner or later. And likely the former. The shape he was in was dreadful, and there would be no recovery; things would taper painfully to their natural end.

            At least with no intervention.

            They all figured it had to come sooner or later…all of them but Stewie. He not only questioned when it was likely to come, but whether it had to come at all. At least, not before the passage of many years, many decades.

            He approached his toy box and activated the baseball bat lever that opened the entrance to his secret room.

            He would head back in there and labor some more on the one thing that stood a chance of allowing Brian to live. Step one to make the future what he wanted it to be.

            _Their_ future. Together.

            And then after he was done figuring out a new series of adjustments that might yield the necessary results, and then applying those adjustments to his machine, he had only to wait. Wait to see if it would work this time. And if, as with previous efforts, it did not, he would have no choice but to try yet again.

_To be continued…_

 


	3. Installment 3

**Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Family Guy and intend no copyright infringement.**

** Parking **

**Or, Time Enough**

**Installment 3**

               

            It’s perfect, just like memory, when Brian kisses him on the couch.

            Scratch that- it is _not_ just like memory, but this time it _is_ perfect. Memory can be faulty. Hasn’t he spent _so_ much time, dedicated so many moments to reminding himself strenuously how Brian had been an almost unconscionable asshat to him? No matter what blind rapture he’d experienced during their first stab at a more-than-platonic relationship, no matter what tender, sentimental feelings were still attached to that period, the stone-cold fact was their first time around had never been as perfect as he’d built it up to be in his head. The playing field feels more level now. Brian’s looking at him with this plaintive expression Stewie’s never seen before, one that seems to ache with hope and need, and beg for some sort of absolution that only Stewie can deliver.

            “I don’t expect anything to happen right now…”

            Stewie choked back a laugh. Brian did, of course. The way he spoke his claim of modest assumptions, half-panting and pressing an insistent erection against Stewie’s thigh in a most deliberate manner, was not consistent with one who thought he’d be turned away with his needs not met.

            It was somewhat annoying; Brian _should_ stop taking things to be a given, particularly now when the damnable dog _has_ to know that as soon as they’ve spent the night together, they’ll be right back in the thick of a relationship. Brian should extend the courtesy to Stewie of getting over things at his own speed...but then he wouldn’t be Brian, Stewie supposes.

            Fuck it. Stewie’d been deprived for too long. He was too weak emotionally and too hard in a certain area of his anatomy to seriously consider telling the dog to take a hike for the night. He would allow _this_ level of presumption from Brian, if no other bad habit of the canine’s would be endured with so much forbearance in their renewed relationship.

            Stewie laid back, gave a hard tug to Brian’s collar, and yanked the dog on top of him.

            “Here,” said the boy in a throaty whisper. “Right now. Let’s have at it.”

            A feeling like a cold bolt of lightening tingled through the pit of his stomach; half exhilaration, half fear. And not the kind of kink-infused fear that would fuel the exhilaration. No, this fear was only troubling.

            What if he only had so much power to wield over the canine’s head, and it had all just been spent, handed over without even a semblance of resistance, with the verdict he’d just given?

            Brian looked only momentarily startled by being so unceremoniously forcibly maneuvered; then, he went along with it eagerly, coming to lie flat on top of the boy and taking his lips again.

            Stewie’d held it as a promise to himself for years now, that no matter what the circumstances, no matter how much he still loved the cursed canine, he’d never let Brian come back.

            “ _Stewie_ …” the dog sighed, right in Stewie’s ear, causing the boy to lightly shudder. “Oh, god, I’ve missed this.” He leaned back so that he was looking into Stewie’s face.

            Stewie closed his eyes as he brought a hand up to brush along the side of Brian’s muzzle.

            What they were embarking on was foolish; it would be so easy for them to get caught doing this down here. However, Stewie would be damned if he let a little matter like that stop them. He and Brian had gone through too much to be together again to delay what they wanted to do for anything.

            As they kissed and petted, Stewie caught himself acting too passive a participant in the activities. This whole encounter had a strange, dreamlike quality about it. He heard his own soft sounds of pleasure as though they came from someone else. Only minutes earlier he had been kissing Brian aggressively, but now Brian’s tongue twisted and probed and pushed, while Stewie’s subserviently caressed. He let Brian set the pace of their liaison. He was ready to advance past the making out portion of this exchange, but he let the dog draw the process out as he liked with prolonged kissing, groping, and caressing. Stewie couldn’t really find it within himself to assert any amount of control in this situation. All Stewie’s movements were slight and perfunctory; he barely even helped to take off his own pants. He was done in by the profound relief he felt to have Brian so close again. He loved Brian. He loved him, and he was transcendently happy to be back with him.

            Brian didn’t deserve to have it like this with him- have it slow and adoring and romantic like this. Even if tonight was about starting over. As his last act of penance, Brian should have to forfeit the type of sex that he wanted to have right now. Stewie knew Brian wanted tonight to be a tender, healing lovemaking that erased the sundry hurts of the past. What Stewie craved, however, was to vigorously work out all the remaining animosities there were between them in the sack. Even though he wouldn’t be the dominant one in the act, he wanted to work Brian _hard_. He wanted to jack his hips roughly in time with his lover’s thrusts; to claw at the dog’s shoulder blades, to bite the sides of his neck.

            And yet he sacrificed his own first choice to allow this to be the beautiful, touching reunion Brian was yearning for, even though he himself won’t be able to find healing in doing it that way.

            Still, when Stewie found himself freed from the confines of his clothing from the waist down, his arousal bared to the bracingly cool air that pervaded the house at night, before being embraced in the clasp of Brian’s warm paw- he could hardly be aware that there was anything in the world but that warm, leathery sensation of the pad of that paw on his sensitive organ, stroking him.

            And when finally the dog entered him, it was like everything he’d ever missed and never had, and he didn’t care if Brian was unworthy, nor worry one iota about what the future would hold.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

            Stewie adjusted Brianne’s bonnet and frowned.

            He had known there were be questioning looks when he came back here, but he’d underestimated how many.

            Quahog really was a small town. Even worse, while he’d been growing up there, he’d lived with an apparent determination to achieve an infamy that was unnecessary, anyway. The size of the town and  the love of gossip of the ignoramuses who populated it would’ve seen to it that the course his life took would’ve been scrutinized, regardless. Since he _had_ made a point to leave behind somewhat of a legend for himself, though, he was subjected to even more notice than he would’ve been had he merely gone about his own business and tried to behave as average as he could.

            _Great job, Stewie,_ he told himself and not for the first time. _You may not have succeeded in being known and worshipped all over the world, but you’ve managed to captivate the whole of sleepy little Quahog with your little scandal._

            And it very nearly was a scandal, crazy as that sounded.

            He’d left Quahog with two middle fingers raised, ambitious boasts on his lips about all the glorious and  towering achievements that would be his, now that he was free from the shackles of a small town with small minds. And here he was, suddenly back in town…seen everywhere toting a child. He just knew that practically everyone who saw him was wondering just what he was doing with a baby. Why the hell would _Stewie Griffin_ , of all people, the most unstable of all the Griffin offspring, who was by turns mad scientist, catty critic of just about everything everyone else did ever, and flamboyant party boy, want a kid? And where was her mother? Stewie wouldn’t put it past the ridiculous nosy parkers to believe that he’d stolen Brianne or some such rot.

             As that thought crossed his mind, a memory flared of his mother’s reaction when he’d turned up on the doorstep of his childhood home with an infant in one arm and a suitcase under the other.

            “Stewie, I heard a car pull into the driveway and looked out and saw it was you,” she said straightaway upon opening the door. It was night- not really late, but late enough for Peter and Lois to be in bed. However, for Lois it was during that space of a half an hour that she would have been reading in bed before turning off the lamp and going to sleep. “What’re you doing here, don’t you start grad school tomorrow?”

             She hadn’t glimpsed the baby at first; it took her a few long moments to start taking in such details. As soon as she did, the tiredness on her face all but slid away and she looked muddled for an entirely different reason as she asked, “And who’s _this_?”

            Stewie had replied simply, “A memento of a most ill-considered relationship.”

            Lois kept on looking puzzled. Her gaze flickered up and down, from Stewie’s face to Brianne’s and back again.

            “Whose?”

            “This is your granddaughter: Brianne Victoria Griffin.”

            “Wha- what? You have a _kid_?” Lois literally staggered, backing up a few steps, her mouth agape and her eyes wide.

            “Whose else’s would she be?” Stewie had inquired, unsympathetic to her shock. “She’s the most singularly adorable of cherubs, not likely a creature whom either Chris or Meg would ever manage to produce. And what would I be doing standing on your doorstep in the middle of the night, holding one of my siblings’ children that you’ve somehow mysteriously never met, anyway?”

                Lois gawked at him, incredulous.

            “Well, she must have another parent, Stewie. Where’s her-”

            And there it was, the million dollar question; Stewie felt his jaw tighten reflexively.

            “ _I’m_ the one who wanted her,” he said, trying to make his voice firm and unyielding, hoping to derail her from asking further questions. “From the beginning, I was the only one who volunteered to assume the role of a parent. So I’m the one who’s going to her raise her. As I have been for the last several months.”

            Lois still looked as though she might fall over from the shock of all this. She swallowed and struggled for words, in the end winding up saying, “She’s beautiful,” in a rather quiet, strangled-sounding voice.

            Stewie could tell that what she really wanted to ask was why he, twenty-three and single, would want to take on the enormous responsibility of raising a child- and on his own, to boot. Lois knew him well enough to know that had he knocked up some hapless girl who hadn’t wanted a baby, it wasn’t like him to have any compunctions about abortions. She was right; he didn’t, in general, but that hardly applied to _this_ case.

            He smoothed the pad of his finger along the gently furrowed brow of his dozing daughter while gazing at her tenderly, if pensively.

            “How did this happen, Stewie? Given your usual preferences…”

            Cutting his eyes back up to Lois, he’d said crisply, “My preferences remained unchanged.” He paused, then sighed. “It happened, Mother. And that’s all I’m willing to say about it for the time being.”

            And so Lois had relented, giving up her interrogation session for the time being, and showed her son and granddaughter upstairs, where she helped them get set up in Stewie’s old room.

            They’d been living there ever since.

            It was interesting to discover how he’d adjusted to life as a parent. It didn’t exactly involve any revelations; he always knew he would be a better parent than the pale imitations of ones that he had. But that, after all, wasn’t saying much, and furthermore, there were all manner of good parents, and Stewie was rather curious to find out what kind he would be.

            He wasn’t the most natural of fathers. Brianne was here now, and he loved her deeply, but she was here because desperate times had called for desperate measures. There were virtually no other circumstances he could conceive of in which he would have become a parent.

            He’d wanted a son. But damn if it didn’t take a short amount of reflection after her birth to decided that he was _much_ better equipped to have a little girl. He imagined braiding her hair with pretty, brightly colored ribbons before the start of kindergarten, helping her pick out a dress for her first school dance, going for father/daughter mani-pedis, and intimidating any poor, unsuspecting suitor of his little princess with various advanced weaponry, and those images made him smile. Conversely, what if he had had a boy, and wound up with one who’d feel the need to constantly prove his masculinity, having a gay father and all? That was all he needed- Little Mister Macho, ashamed of his dad, going around passing gas in mass quantities, going out for all kinds of boring and boorish sports, becoming a teenage lothario, accumulating baby mommas and diseases and just generally making Stewie’s life a living hell.

            Besides, from the beginning, he’d had a very specific inspiration in mind for the child’s moniker. Since that child had turned out to be a girl, this meant tweaking the name he’d had planned, and there was undeniably a silver lining to this necessity. What would he have called his little boy? Brian, Jr.? Why hadn’t he realized before just how unthinkable that was? Changed the spelling to B-r- _y-_ a-n? That wasn’t much better at all. Oh,  but Stewie would have dreaded the kind of questions either of those courses of action would have brought about.

            “You have a great name,” he’d said to his little girl only a few days ago. “It means noble, virtuous, and strong. My name means ‘guardian of the house’. It comes from the word ‘steward’. Now, you tell me, with all  my myriad of impressive qualities, do I _really_ look like I’m fit for nothing more than mundane domestic tasks?”

            And then he’d had to laugh at himself, because, of course, to her, he did.

            Eventually, Lois had started back up with her questions about Brianne’s mystery mother, and he’d broken down and told her that he’d had a drunken ‘experiment’ with a girl he’d met at a frat party. The fact that during college, Stewie had never gone to any frat parties was beside the point. Anyway, the story went that he’d neglected to take proper precautions, and she’d wound up pregnant. Stewie didn’t find out about this right away because the girl had left school after discovering she was expecting. However, by a miraculous twist of fate, Stewie happened to run into her out shopping one day when she was very near full term. She’d disclosed that she wanted to adopt the baby out. She’d had a couple lined up to be parents for the baby, but they’d died in a car crash. Stewie’s one night stand then planned to give the child up to an orphanage, but Stewie couldn’t stand the thought of a child of his being out there, raised by strangers, and not knowing him. So he’d  decided that he was going to raise his daughter, and the baby girl’s mother had put up no argument.

            Lois had fallen for this tale, hook, line, and sinker.

            Currently at the park, attending the folk art and music festival with the rest of his family, he had placed himself and Brianne under the shadow of an oak tree and somewhat apart from the festivities. It was a lame festival, anyway. There was nothing there to entertain him even in the slightest, nor did there seem to be much Brianne would enjoy doing, either. He hadn’t been in the best humor when he’d arrived, and his mood had only gotten lousier when he’d run into Chris at the face painting stand twenty minutes ago. Chris’s son’s face had been  painted to look like a tiger, and Chris had put forth the idea that Brianne get her countenance decorated, as well.

            “How about a doggy?” he had suggested good-naturedly, and pointed at the picture pinned up on the booth of the dog design. Stewie’s breath faltered.

            He visualized Brianne with her face decorated like that and nearly had a heart attack.

            Maybe he shouldn’t have come back to town, but it had seemed like a good idea at the time. After becoming a parent, his former plans for grad school had been thrown off. He needed to find a full-time job if he was going to support his child. Since returning to his hometown, he’d managed to secure one in the physics research department at Quahog College. Soon he’d be able to move out of that wretched house on Spooner Street, but that wasn’t the only reason he’d been so relieved to get a job so shortly after returning to town. In some very essential way that it seemed he couldn’t shake- and he despised himself a little for it- Quahog was where he belonged; his home before all others.

                “It’s all because of you,” Stewie said softly to the baby, as she looked back at him with great concentration. “They’re all staring because of you, and your _gorgeous_ little ensemble. With you looking the way you do, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone came by and tried to sign you up for some horrid child beauty pageant. I myself was a contestant in one when I was young and dumb. Oh, but my little Bree Bree, don’t _you_ get any ideas; _that_ is a sort of drama akin to hell and I will never be letting you anywhere near it.”

            He heard his name, and looked up to see Lois approaching him. In her wake, Peer and Chris waddled, and Chris’s three-year-old son, Vincent, toddled.

            “Chris is going to take Vince on the merry-go-round,“ said Lois. She drew up beside Stewie and Brianne and pointed to her granddaughter. “Would you like to take _her_ on the merry-go-round, too, so Brianne can enjoy a ride with her cousin?”

                “Yeesh, Lois,” said Peter, looking grossed out, “‘enjoy a ride with her cousin’? I didn’t think we were that kinda family. We ain’t in the Deep South, here.”

                Somewhere off in the near distance and Clutching a beer in a 44-ounce plastic cup in a hand topped with chipped, blood red nails that looked like talons, Mallory, Chris’s wife, was handing over the requisite tickets to take her shot at the “Test Your Strength” booth.

                Chris had the absolute worst taste in women. It was tragic, and yet totally foreseeable that he would’ve ended up with one he let step all over him in tacky, Payless plastic pumps while the rest of her wore an even tackier casino gift shop T-shirt adorned with an image of howling wolves and frayed, acid-washed denim shorts.

            To nobody’s disappointment, Meg had opted out of that day’s outing. At that very moment, she was presumably where she’d told them she had to be that day. Off in the woods with her husband, Kevin, at a marriage retreat, trying save their struggling relationship. For the longest time, Meg had been trying to get together with Kevin and for the longest time he hadn’t been biting, but then, eventually, he’d decided that he was willing to use her as somebody to hook up with when nobody else was available. Meg, typically, had become convinced that they were in love. When the Griffins and the Swansons had gone on a joint family vacation to Las Vegas, she’d gotten him drunk and had tricked him into marrying her. Afterward, he’d wanted an annulment right away, but his parents, being close friends of Peter and Lois and not wanting to cause a rift with them, urged him to give the marriage a fair shot. Kevin had grudgingly agreed, and there _were_ times when his union with Meg seemed to be doing okay, but Stewie would bet his left buttock (and he could work them both out as evenly as he wanted, or even give extra sculpting attention to the right; the left one was always the tightest one) that it wouldn’t end up going the distance.

                Mallory swung mightily with the mallet, bringing it down forcefully enough to send the weight sailing straight up to the highest point and force the bell to ring out in a loud wail.

            In response to this noise, Brianne face scrunched into an expression of extreme displeasure and she let out a wail of her own, ludicrously disproportionate to her size.

                “She hates high-pitched noises,” Stewie explained, attempting to soothe the squalling child with gentle clucking sounds as he pulled back her bonnet and gently stroked her thick, pale hair.

                “Oh!” exclaimed Lois in her characteristic shrill, nasally voice, and the baby cried all the more. Lois looked alarmed; she had never known Brianne to cry so raucously before. As babies went, she was a remarkably cool-headed one.

            Stewie glared at his mother for antagonizing the situation with her hideous voice, and shifted Brianne in his arms.

                “I think I’ll just take her home,” he announced, and then walked away from them all, down the paved pathway, holding his daughter close to his chest and rocking her slightly back and forth. It worked; she quieted before they reached the street.

            He kissed the rounded tip of her nose as they stopped on the sidewalk outside of the park beside his car. He opened the passenger side door and spotted Brianne’s favorite stuffed animal laying on the backseat. He leaned back with his arm outstretched to retrieve it for her.

            He got his daughter installed in her car seat with the toy. The bear was old and shabby-looking, stitched up ungracefully and patched in places, with a button replacing a long-lost eye, but freshly laundered and full of sentimental value, a sort of family heirloom, and since he’d had the opportunity to pass it on to his daughter, he’d been very pleased to observe how fond Brianne had almost instantly become of it.

            ‘Now you hang onto Rupert,” he told her. “Make him feel safe, but don’t let him look out the window. If he gets to do so, he will sometimes fall prey to a most dreadful susceptibility he occasionally has to carsickness, but I’m sure that can be avoided if you just cuddle him and don’t let him see what’s coming.”

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

            He tried to leave but wasn’t allowed to.

            “Stewie?”

            His mother spoke his name inquiringly, judgingly.

            He considered not responding. He considered ignoring her, flinging open the door and bolting. What he ended up doing however, was sighing in defeat and turning to face her.

            “Yes, what is it?”

            “Were you just running out to your car for something? Because I know you can’t be leaving yet.”

            “Um…I…” Caught, he stalled. He didn’t want to get into it with her. If he told her he wanted to leave early- ordinarily, these weekly get-togethers would last until around nine o’clock, when his parents would be barely able to keep their senior citizen eyelids open- he’d be in for a _major_ hissy fit. Hell, even if he went with his first instinct and ran out of the house, he’d pay for it later. There would be another family dinner next week, and he did not want to have to endure his mother’s shrewish chastisements when he showed up for that one. And _not_ showing up was not an option. Lois would only keep pestering him to do so until she got her way.

            “Yes, I, um, was running out to my car for a pack of Peppermint Mentos. I thought I left them in the glove compartment, but now I find that they were in my trouser pocket all along.” He patted the pocket of his jeans and extracted the referred to item. “I found myself in dire need of one of these babies after having so many of your delicious, but rather potent, garlic mashed potatoes. Would you like one as well?”

            As she took one, Stewie let go of the door handle and glanced over his mother’s shoulder to see that Peter, Meg, and Chris had followed her into the living room. He really didn’t want to be stuck here any longer; even if he was still destined to end up doing something that was supposed to foster familial bonds, nonetheless.

            He looked to his father. “What do you say about heading out to the Drunken Clam, Dad? You and me and Chris can hang out there. Have kind of a boys’ night?”

            Peter latched onto his younger son’s proposition, so eager that he bordered on sounding frantic. “Yeah, yeah, that’s a terrific idea, Stewie.” He was already inching toward the door. “I- I think that would be all kinds of good for…uh…our father and sons’ relationship to, um, get totally hammered and talk out of our heads until we pass out in our own puke. ” He kept his eyes on his wife as he continued to slowly move sideways toward the exit. Stewie started to put his hand back on the doorknob, about to give it a turn and make his escape.

            Lois shouted the plan down, however. “‘A boys’ night’? And leave me here? _With Meg_?”

            Meg pursed her lips, but didn’t say a thing in her own defense, because it never got her anywhere, anyway. She forced a smile instead, and was quite chipper as she said to Lois, “A girls’ night in, Mom. You know, we could have a really good time!”

            “Yeah, sure, about as fun as a root canal,” Lois muttered, then turned to her husband and sons with strong disapproval written all over her face. “This is family night.”

            “Well, then, why don’t we _all_ go out?” Stewie suggested this as a last ditch effort to avoid getting stuck in the house and doing some insipid activity that would only appeal to Lois, such as going over the baby albums.

            “No,” said Lois flatly, succinctly. Arms crossed, which always meant she was going to be stubborn about behaving like a tyrannical ogress who couldn’t see past her own desires for the sake of the happiness of the group. So Stewie gave up and withdrew from the conversation, wandering over to the entertainment stand. He stood gazing detachedly into the fishbowl that resided on top of it, his back turned to everybody, listening detachedly as Lois went on to say, “We don’t do that on family night.”

            “Awww, but I wanna go the Clam!” the Fat Man whined. “Lois, how come just because this is an evenin’ we gotta spend all together as a stinkin’ family, that means that we have to stay cooped up in here?”

            “Carl just set up a pool table in the back room of the Mini Mart, and I’m sure he’d be super happy if  some guys showed up to play a game with him. He’s always so sorry when it turns out he has to work on a Sunday night,” said Meg. “And Mom, you and I- and Stewie, if he doesn’t want to play pool- can take advantage of all the new monthly women’s magazines that just came in a couple days ago. There’s something for everyone at the Quahog Mini Mart!”

            “Oh, god, honestly, Meg, do you hear yourself?” Lois asked, dropping her face into her hand in frustration.

            Going on, she repeated, “This is _family night_ ,” because obviously nobody else was getting it. And feeling her eyes on his back, Stewie knew she was now talking not only to Meg, but to him, too. “And if _certain people_ make the decision that these Sunday night get-togethers are not a priority to them, then so be it. It’s not up to me to go to them; they need to come here.”

            “Jeez, woman, relax before you have a conniption,” Stewie muttered, idly watching Wanda and Chips, the two goldfish another cold-blooded vertebra, Lois, and her useless, lazy mate, Peter, called pets, swim around.

            Chris spoke up just then, saying, “Look, Mom’s right. We may as well keep up the tradition of hanging out here on Sunday nights. So what would everybody like to do for our family night in?”

            Stewie listened to his family members call out their various suggestions and begin to list the pros and cons of each potential choice, from Candyland to charades to wadding up wet paper towels and throwing them at the walls. Fortunately, it wasn’t too long before the debate process ended and they all agreed- Lois a little less enthusiastically than the rest- upon an activity during which they wouldn’t have to talk to each other.

            A movie.

            Stewie stayed where he was for a couple minutes longer, hearing the sounds of the others settling into their spots, then the music accompanying the opening credits begin, followed by his father loudly and impatiently asking him to move, as he was partially blocking the T.V.

            When he turned around, Chris, Peter, and Lois were all sitting on the couch together, while Meg had taken up residence in the armchair.

            Stewie sighed, his shoulders slumping in reconciliation, and, in lieu of other available seating, after a moment’s hesitation sat down on the floor in front of the sofa, at his family’s feet.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

                “Thank you, Brian,” said Stewie, tucked under Brian’s arm, his cheek resting on the dog’s chest while his finger swirled tiny circles in the plush white fur. They’d finished making love hours ago. Stewie had, about a quarter of an hour ago, woken up from the sound slumber he customarily fell into after their carnal relations. He’d found upon doing so that he needed to relieve himself and got up to leave the tent. Standing up had forced some of Brian’s cum to drain out of him, adding to the small wet spot that had already been left upon the sleeping bag they were sharing. Brian had- in a tactical move, Stewie was certain- placed himself on the clean side. He was equally certain the sleep he found Brian in when he returned from bleeding the dragon was fake, a ruse to discourage the child from griping at him. Stewie had laid back down in a huff, but his anger inexplicably faded five minutes later when Brian “woke up” and cuddled up to and kissed the boy. Stewie still felt slightly vile but he couldn’t bring himself to start a fight after Brian had pulled him in so close.

                “For what?” the dog asked as one of his fingers stroked absently up and down his young lover’s spine.

            Stewie tilted his chin up and elaborated, smiling. “For taking me camping.”

            “We’re only in the backyard,” responded Brian, chucking and giving the boy’s shoulder a quick, affectionate squeeze . “It’s not _really_ camping. And I didn’t take you anywhere. We both walked out onto the lawn and pitched a tent.”

            The child hummed, unconcerned with such technicalities. He was perfectly content, anyway. 

                Whatever was going on between them had been going on for four months now. They never talked about the entanglements of their arrangement. As a matter of fact, they’d never talked about their situation as being an arrangement. The way they went about their days and nights with one another always felt very casual, even though ‘casual’ was a word Stewie hated to apply to what they were doing together.

                He didn’t feel courted, but he didn’t feel used, either.

            Not exactly. Not yet.

            But…did Stewie consider them to be dating?

            He really could not have said if he did. They went on a lot of outings that it certainly wouldn’t seem completely out of order to classify as dates, but because they didn’t really treat each other any differently than they did back when their relationship was strictly platonic- and because of their lack of communication about that subject-  he didn’t know if he could rightly call it ‘dating’ .

            However, regardless of the label of the relationship, what he _did_ feel was that Brian was his.

            A slight niggling of insecurity hit him at that moment as a notion darted all of a sudden into his mind, and buried itself within. Before it could take root too deeply, however, Stewie thought that he’d vanquish it quickly by procuring some kind of reassurance from the dog. After all, there were _certain words_ that a person in a relationship just needed to hear every once in awhile. Now was one of those times.

            “You know what I haven’t heard from you in awhile? ‘I love you’.”

            Stewie felt the muscles in  the fur-covered arm that was wrapped around him go taught reflexively. Then the dog said, with warmth in his tone but also with an underlying note of gruffness, “I love you. God, of course I do. I love you.”

            Stewie felt appeased, sighing and snuggling down comfortably into Brian’s side.

            “This…this is going to color the rest of your life, isn’t it?”

            Stewie started a little at the starkly solemn tone in Brian’s voice as the dog spoke those words.

            “You said you weren’t worried about warping me,” he reminded the canine slowly. Hesitantly. He’d believed Brian when the dog had said that, and had had no reason to question that statement ever since, either. There’d been next to no indications given that Brian felt like he was at all doing wrong by Stewie by having this relationship with him. Indeed, he never acted like he thought _anything_ he did to Stewie was wrong, even though he definitely continued having his selfish asshole moments- the fact that Stewie was now somebody he was sleeping with as opposed to just a friend apparently made no difference.      

            “I meant that about the, uh…about the…sex part.” He sounded irrationally shy about saying the word ‘sex’ to someone he’d been fucking on a very regular basis over the past several months. Fucked in dozens of different positions and under some quite kinky scenarios, while never seeming the least self-conscious during the act.

            “What other part could there possibly be?”

            His question made Brian guffaw. “An excellent question, Kid,” he said, his voice shaking with mirth. He laughed so much that he started coughing. When he managed to compose himself he added, “Let’s just leave it at that. As blunt as that was.”

            “Well, that’s me: I shoot from the hip,” said Stewie, smiling, bucking his pelvis against the dog’s side. Brian snickered and moved against the small thrusting package, making the baby murmur appreciatively.

            But then there was a lull. He and Brian both stilled and there was silence. It didn’t end for what felt like a very long minute, then Brian muttered, sounding somewhat pained, “Maybe I started this whole thing because I wanted it to.”

            Why the devil was Brian being so damn enigmatic tonight? Nothing had occasioned that Stewie knew about that would have put the canine in such a strange attitude. Stewie chewed on his bottom lip as he tried to puzzle it out, but it was no use. He remained baffled, and this displeased him.

            He flipped over onto his belly and began kicking his legs up and down as he spoke.

            “This is the perfect setup, isn’t it? To be sleeping with somebody you’re actually friends with?”

            Brian hesitated, looking full into Stewie’s face. The dog’s expression was so lost that the baby’s heart skipped a beat in concern; then, Brian’s demeanor returned to normal, and he asked in a slightly irritated tone of voice, “Stewie, do we really have to talk about this?” He jammed a paw into one of his dog pockets, coming up with a cigarette and a lighter. A flick, a click, a spark, and he started puffing on his nicotine stick  with great energy.

            “Brian…” He didn’t say it in a nagging tone; he was cleverer than that. He knew that being too pestering could be a surefire way _not_ to keep your man. But he wasn’t able to stop a hint of frustration from escaping through a tiny, vulnerable crack in his voice. “You’re the one who opened the door to this conversation with that cryptic remark about…about how our relationship is going to, what was it? Color me for life? Well, don’t you want it that way? Relationships…they change lives, Brian, they just do, and ...”

            The canine cut him off then, saying in an exceptionally flat voice, “If it was ‘perfect’, it would be easier, Stewie.”

            Stewie stared back at Brian, speechless for a moment. He felt confused and a little sad. What was so difficult about their relationship? The keeping it a secret part? But they managed that admirably. Their nitwit family had no fucking clue what was going on between them.

            He was flushed with the urge to say something to somehow make things better. Brian didn’t make it easy for him to put it all out there, exactly, particularly when the canine was so stubborn about keeping his own feelings so private, but because it _was_ Brian, Stewie didn’t really have much choice when it came to revealing what his heart wanted to tell the dog. Brian owned it too completely now, and from now on, it would always be an open book to him.

            “I…wouldn’t trade this for the world, easy or no.”

            The dog paused, then said, his voice soft and heart-felt,

            “I wouldn’t either, Stewie.”

            What a night! Tonight, their relationship was like a roller coaster, at least for Stewie. Every single time Brian would say or do something that had Stewie feeling insecure about where he stood in the dog’s romantic estimation, he’d follow it up with a remark that had the boy’s stomach feeling like, as the hackneyed old expression went, it was filled with dancing butterflies. He looked down at his stomach, half expecting to see it rippling from winged creatures fluttering within.

            “Navel-gazing?” the dog asked, pulling Stewie back to the present.

            “Only in the literal sense. You’ve always been more guilty of that then me,” Stewie teased.

            Brian gave a dry snort and stabbed out his cigarette. The baby began to run slow, aimless laps around his bellybutton as his mind began to wander yet again.

            “Do you think I should get this pierced?”

            Brian yawned and stretched and gave a lazy lick to Stewie’s ear.

            “I don’t know, but I think you really, _really_ shouldn’t ask me to do it.”

            Stewie understood at once why the canine had said that and laughingly retorted, “I wasn’t going there.” He gasped suddenly when Brian lightly bit his ear’s shell. “But it’s not like you’re drunk right now, anyway, so we probably wouldn’t have to worry about it resulting in _too_ much bodily harm.” He ran a hand thoughtfully over his babyishly rounded tummy and wondered if bellybuttons ever came untied, and also if anybody was still doing South Beach. 

            “I feel like it,” said Brian, voice low and velvety, grin roguish. “I feel like I’m drunk. Being with you is so intoxicating.” He brushed the baby’s hand out of the way and took over what Stewie had been doing, gently tracing the outside of the baby’s belly button.

            It was so out of the ordinary for Brian to speak to him like that, Stewie laughed out loud, taken aback by his lover’s romantic line.

                And then the dog’s paw delved lower and there wasn’t anything to laugh at anymore.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

                It felt like the time machine spat him out.

            He took a spill onto the carpet, his stomach roiling. He clamped a hand over his mouth, but it was no good. Taking it away in a hurry, he succumbed to the churning in his belly and his puke spilled out around him into a sizeable puddle. He was violently ill, throwing up in gushing spurts as time seemed to lag and lag. He was beginning to suspect that there was a limit to how many journeys through time it was safe to take in a row. Physically, he felt like shit just now, of course, but there also were accumulating consequences that had started to take a mental toll. Such a large amount of consecutive time traveling could mix a person up; it was hard even to keep track of the concept of time anymore.

            He’d never taken so many trips in such a short span of time.

            _Time…Everything was about time…_

            Stewie finished vomiting and straightened up on wobbly legs, arms wrapped around his gut and trying hard to come back to himself. He shook his head. He’d revisited this same exact moment so many times. If one were to total all the hours he’d spent time traveling, it would probably have added up to several days spent ping-ponging around in time. Involuntarily, he groaned aloud.  He had to keep his wits about him, but despite his big brain and the unstoppable sense of purpose that he knew absolutely would spur him forward through everything until he either found a solution or died trying, he couldn’t prevent the occasional moment when, although he kept coming back to this very specific day, he almost doubted that he knew where in time he was at all.

            _But no. It’s the same day, not the same moment…_

            The child felt a sensation like ice water poured down his back. He couldn’t have said just what made it occur to him, but a glance at the clock on the wall of his bedroom confirmed the awful suspicion that had so mysteriously seized him.

            His timing _was_ off.

            He stared at the time machine, and suddenly it was buzzing and humming, all of its lights flashing brightly.

            There was no time to run and hide, and the sense of helplessness that assaulted him at this knowledge was, in a word, ghastly.

            Seconds later, the time machine doors opened, and Stewie held his breath.

 

_To be continued…_


	4. Installment 4

**Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Family Guy and intend no copyright infringement.**

** Parking **

**Or, Time Enough**

**Installment 4**

                He fell backward onto the floor, landing on his ass with a thump. He muttered a quiet “O _omph!”_ to himself, and climbed back onto his feet, rubbing his bum. He instinctively looked behind him at the door and strained his ears, half expecting Lois to call up to him, asking whether he was okay. However, he quickly determined that she was probably too preoccupied to do so, what with the way the family had all formed a party of dread around the table in the kitchen as they commiserated with one another, anticipating the perceived impending loss in their family. Combine this with the fact that the impact of his slight six-year-old form against the floor hadn’t even been all that loud, and it left Stewie all but certain that the sound of his fall wouldn’t send someone up to his room to check on him.

                He turned back around and fixed his eyes on the Stewie who had just exited the time machine and was looking all around himself, appearing slightly troubled, as though he knew something was as it shouldn’t be. It was mere moments before he noticed that there was another Stewie in the room. Their eyes locked.

“No,” said the Other Him, jaw falling open. “Oh, good lord, how on earth did _this_ happen? You were supposed to be keeping track of-”

                “Time, yes,” Stewie finished somewhat snidely. “I am aware. And I’ve been keeping track of it most assiduously up until this point. You know the unpleasant effects all this consecutive time traveling has on a person’s mind and body. Or have you become immune by now? Speaking of which, how long have we been doing this for? I mean, you’re on effort number…what? And how do you think the fact that we’ve crossed paths with each other is going to affect the outcome of our mission?” He was speaking quite rapidly as he came to ask those last couple of questions, and it was hearing his voice sounding thus that made it hit home all the harder just how scared he really was.

                The Other Him said nothing. However greatly in both their interests to put their heads together and figure this out, he seemed only interested, at this time, in pondering his own thoughts.

                Perplexed and more than a little frustrated by the later version of himself’s inexplicable unresponsiveness, Stewie twiddled his thumbs beneath his chin and peered over the tops of them while wearing an expression of thinly-veiled impatience.

“So you can tell me more about what won’t work than I know so far, right?”

                The Other Him only continued to stare into space.

                “Well, what the deuce are you waiting for?” Stewie asked, at a loss for a reason behind the Other Him’s silence. He worried his lip as he waited in vain for a reply from the slightly futuristic version of himself. He knew how he got when he was thinking sometimes; he did _not_ like to be interrupted, and the reveries that he fell into when working out a complex problem were often of such a depth that he was nearly completely unaware of the world outside his head.

As the period of unresponsiveness stretched on for about a whole minute more, though, Stewie was about to take his doppelganger by the shoulders and shake some sense into him.

“Spill, man! What part of the timeline did you come from? What did you see? How did you find out this time? The way that I for one found out on my latest trip was by seeing that grave in the backyard.”

                Yet again, the Other Him didn’t answer, his preoccupied and distant gaze directed toward the door.

                Stewie sighed heavily, and was suddenly conscious of a dull, sore feeling in his chest. It was a sensation that was dangerously close to the pain of defeat. This was foolish. He _hadn’t_ been defeated, not at all. Successfully completing this mission was well within his abilities. He was just worn out, that was all, and giving way to that sigh, that small venting of emotion showed him just how easily he could cry if he let himself. Just how much he wanted to.

“I can only imagine that you saw another future in which our invention fails.”

Still the second Stewie was uncooperative. Stewie couldn’t take it anymore and erupted at the Other Him.

                “Just- for god’s sake! I need you to answer me, goddamn it! Have you already been here? Talking to me, I mean? Is this…” The anger was ebbing out of his voice, as he was distracted by a sudden notion, and probably also because he was starting more and more to feel his fatigue. “Am I _supposed_ to be listening to you?”

                The Slightly-Futuristic version of himself finally made eye contact, and Stewie was not pleased to see that the Other Him was now smirking. Stewie didn’t see anything funny about the situation. It was insupportable that he should leave himself hanging when there were such high stakes at play. God, he could be an ass.

                “Y- you know what? Just forget it. I don’t know why you’re stubbornly refusing to answer me, but it can’t be all that important to hear what you have to say, anyway, because you obviously failed, too. You don’t _look_ like someone who’s succeeded. I don’t know why you can’t pull it together and tell me yourself. It would be best to tell me what to avoid trying next so you can save me some time. However, if this is simply absolutely beyond your powers at the moment, I suppose that’s fine since…well, you’re not _that_ worth listening to, as I’m about to go and undo the chronological tangent you exist in!”

At last the Other Him spoke, and Stewie immediately halted at the entrance to his time machine, just as he was about to step into it.

“Hmm, yes, I don’t really know if you want to do that.” His voice was unlike Stewie had ever heard it. It was quite…zen. The Other Him cracked a smile.

“I can help you. And together we’ll be heading much further into the future than you’ve been going.”

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

There was a time when he intermittently mused about getting the body taxidermied. He felt revolted at himself for even having the thought. In spite of how essentially un-squeamish he was when it came to death-related matters, he couldn’t help but naturally regard this new, borderline necrophilia fixation as macabre and truly sick. In addition to all this, no small part of his revulsion was due to knowing that Brian- on the off chance that his ex-lover could watch him from the beyond- would hate him for what he was doing. How could he forget the dog’s reaction to witnessing the improper disposal of Biscuit’s corpse on the trip that had begun his and Brian’s friendship?

But then again Stewie felt that he needed to defy fate somehow. If it was to be ordained that he should have the constant in his life ripped from him, he needed to find how to circumvent that even in the most miniscule, hollow way, or he felt as though it might be too much for him. His life was spinning out of control. It wasn’t going to work, his plan wasn’t going to work, and he was going to end up losing the one who mattered most to him. Just a token of his precious past, just _something_ to hold on to, and then maybe he wouldn’t lose his mind…what was left of it, anyway. What he was contemplating doing was a grim thought, indeed, but when he contemplated a future that seemed ever more and more likely, in which his everything had gone to a place where Stewie could not find him, aas it any wonder that he started thinking maybe he _was that_ grim?   

Brian was always so terribly concerned about being degraded. Being treated differently because he was a dog was an injustice that he’d balked at at every turn, that he’d fought against in his own little way. And when Stewie thought back, back to the time when he’d been considered the stuffing solution, he decided that his imaginings of Brian’s disapproval had played no small part in making him rule out his backup plan. It had taken awhile to absolutely do tha, however. Because this was the thing. If Brian was degraded to little more than a stuffed toy, then Stewie could keep him. Keep him in his bed, cuddle up with him, possibly even continue to receive sexual gratification from him. What was one more shade of twisted to color his personality?

Stewie was losing it.

                Stewie was losing it, but thankfully, as he was going through his intensely horrible meltdown, there were key moments of lucidity. And in the end, he decided he wouldn’t be able to go through with it. Never in a million years. Whatever _had_ he been thinking, to suppose that he could have Brian’s body in his bed without hearing a heart beating beneath his ear when he rested his cheek on the dog’s chest? If Brian wasn’t going to be alive, he wasn’t going to stay.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

The last horse crossed the finish line when Brianne was a year and a half old.

                At the time, Stewie and his daughter were residing in an apartment downtown, and he should have been living a charmed existence. His star was on the rise, since some of the research he’d been doing at Quahog College had yielded some outstanding results that had done wonders for both the school’s clout and his own.  It had even seen Stewie making the rounds of the news media circuit, both local and national, and had him just _barely_ missing out on a Nobel Peace Prize. Even without that prize money fattening his bank account, though, he was still pretty well-off. Brianne attended a pre- pre-K (yes, apparently they _did_ have such a thing) program that enjoyed a justifiably excellent reputation and cost a small fortune. Stewie was very happy that he could do right by his daughter in this way. Though, no matter what, he would have eschewed the despised alternative of leaving his darling little daughter to Lois’s care, like the woman had had the arrogant presumption to suggest. That _she_ shouldbe entrusted with the precious jewel that was his progeny! Stewie wouldn’t trust her to take care of one of his house plants without making it lose the will to live or working it up into a murderous rage.

His apartment was relatively nice, but he could’ve easily afforded a more upscale place to live. What would the point be in that, though? He did love to decorate, so to have the opportunity to do that with more rooms would have been nice. Additionally, the chance to own some enormous, hulking mansion that he himself had made modifications both stately and state-of-the-art to in order to make it even more fucking imposing-looking would’ve sounded appealing once upon a time. At this juncture in his life, though, it just seemed like a waste.  Who was there in Quahog to intimidate, anyway? Its denizens weren’t even _worth_ intimidating, and besides, there were a couple more commonplace reasons for Stewie to stay where he was, too. He simply loathed the hassles of moving, and also, it had occurred to him that having a very large place seemed kind of useless, from a practical standpoint, when after all, there was only the two of them.

He didn’t date much. There was no time, and little desire. Oh, he had a sex drive that ran quite high, but he was not without the ability to either suppress it for a while or make do with the sundry toys (some rather high tech) he possessed. What’s more, Stewie considered himself a juggling master, but he’d yet to meet any prospects who merited carving out room for a personal life for. However, meaningless hookups had a time and a place. Whenever he absolutely needed to, he’d go cruising for somebody to hit and quit. No one ever captured his fancy enough for him to want to see again.

Stewie’s freshman and sophomore years of college, he was a major whore. It was amazing he managed to escape those two years of licentiousness without contracting some sort of horrid disease. Great fun as it had been at the time to run around on his promiscuity spree, he was now, as a mature adult, far from proud of his sordid past. When it was happening, though, his only thinking was that he was young, hot, and brilliant and he was going to revel in it.

Although, that was hardly his first foray into dissipated behavior. When he was thirteen, he was a parent’s worst nightmare. Well, he would have been, if Lois and the Fat Man had had any idea of the kind of stuff he got up to. He’d always been an expert at keeping secrets, and he hadn’t been about to drop the ball with this one, either, lest it be falsely perceived as some pathetic cry for attention. And while he’d been dissolute, at least he wasn’t an idiot. He wasn’t into hard drugs or anything. Just weed. He was a habitual weed smoker. And the sex didn’t exactly take place under very skeazy circumstances. His MO was just about taking advantage of pubescent boys just discovering their sexuality. It wasn’t as bad as his whore phase in college, though this owed less to a greater conservatism on his part back then than it did to the fact that there had been fewer willing participants in junior and senior high school than in college.  Still, for three years, he’d pretty much lived for having sex and getting high. Anything to endure what life had become, living alone at home with Lois and the Fat Man.

If Lois had known he was in the first year of his teens and already having casual sex with numerous partners, she would’ve had a freak out of epic proportions, of that Stewie had no doubt. Hypocritical twat.  While she surely hadn’t gotten as early a start as he had, there was no fucking way that Lois had been a puritanical good girl as a teenager.

But heck, what would really make her blow a gasket was if she knew that he had already been having sex as a toddler. Or with whom.

When he was sixteen,  there had been a brief salvation, a happy relationship, filled with hope. Those hopes had crashed and burned with a spectacular amount of emotional carnage, and the end of the affair was soon followed by his little escapade in the canoe.

On the day in question, though, a Saturday, in which something long overdue happened to a twenty-four year old Stewie, he was sitting at home with his daughter when he heard a knock on his door, looked out into the hallway, and saw it was Lois. He spared a moment for irritation at her for showing up unannounced, but went to the door and let her in without reproaching her for springing this surprise visit on him. Instead, Stewie greeted her with as much amiability as he could muster and then led his mother through into the living room, where Brianne sat on the rug, surrounded by building blocks.

“Daddy,” said Brianne, giving a tug to Stewie’s pant leg as he stopped at her side. He smiled and sat down next to her where he had been before.

                “Daddy-” Brianne started again, before noticing that there was another person occupying the room.

                “Hi, Lois,” she chirped out happily.

                Lois, slowly lowering herself to a crouched position on the floor next to the little girl, smiled at her, but said, “Brianne, honey, I thought we talked about this before. It’s ‘Grandma’. Can’t you say Grandma?”

As always when Lois made this point, it seemed to perplex the little girl. She tilted her head at a quizzical angle and said, “Everyone else calls you Lois,” her voice clear and melodious like a bell, and continued to play with her blocks. Like Stewie had had, Brianne possessed a voice that defied what was typical for her age; it sounded totally adult already- crystal clear, steady, and absolutely sure of itself.

                “You see? You set a bad example,” Lois muttered sotto voce, leaning in close to her son’s ear.  “As long as you won’t give up calling me by my name, she won’t, either.”

                “I find that very poor logic,” Stewie responded equably. “It’s not as though I’ve ever once _instructed_ her to call you Lois. Besides, kids often have more sway over other kids than parents do, and she hears you called Grandma all the time by Vince, and when Selina’s old enough to speak, she will most likely call you that, too.  But _should_ my daughter calling you Grandma be contingent upon me ceasing to call you by your first name, I’m afraid I can’t oblige.” He smiled at her. It was a smooth, bland, lazy smile with just the subtlest hint of frigidity that he had perfected over the years. “I’ve told you many times how I feel about the M-word.”

                “I want her to call me Grandma, Stewie.”

                Stewie merely rolled his eyes at her persistence. He didn’t know what Lois was complaining about. Brianne may not call her grandmother by the title of ‘grandma’, but it was obvious that she, to Stewie’s never-ending, though unvoiced, annoyance, liked the horrid fishwife a lot. It was undoubtedly the genetic influence of Brianne’s other parental unit that caused her to be taken in by anyone who was sweet to her. Unlike Stewie, she gave the benefit of the doubt to just about everybody she met. 

“What are you two building?” Lois asked, leaning forward avidly with over-the-top fake interest.

                “A nucular facility,” answered Brianne cheerfully, adding another LEGO to the structure she was currently working on.  “A…a…um…What was it, Daddy? A…en-rick-ment facility.”

                “Close,” said Stewie, smiling. “ _Enrichment_ ,” he corrected gently.  “And it’s _nuclear_ , sweetie. Good heavens, let’s not have you sound like some fearful ignoramus rodeo clown-turned-politician from Texas.”

Lois blinked her eyes. Stewie gave an internal dry laugh. It had taken Lois considerably longer- about until he was four or five- to begin to understand everything that he was saying. Even then, she didn’t often take him seriously, assuming that some of his more remarkable statements were him repeating stuff he’d heard on T.V. that he had no comprehension of, and that he didn’t mean half the shit he’d say. For some inexplicable reason, though, she’d always been able to understand Brianne, and in spite of Stewie’s daughter not having been born, as Stewie was, already knowing how to speak, and as yet unable to form sentences as complex as her genius father had been able to at her age, whatever Brianne _did_ say was quite frequently wont to put Lois into a state of significant awe. The woman should be used to it by now, but all it took was a new three or four syllable word to bring on some fresh bewilderment.

“I don’t think we need to worry about _that_ happening,” Lois said, beaming. She ruffled the top of Brianne’s head, disregarding the little girl’s indignant squeak as she immediately set about smoothing her mussed tresses down, for she was quite vain about her hair.

“She’s a little genius, Stewie.” Lois chuckled. “Imagine that! In this family, huh?” She elbowed Stewie conspiratorially.

                Her comment earned her a dagger-like glare from her son. Where was the ‘another’? As in, ‘Imagine! Another genius in the family! Along with you, Stewie!’

Boy, some things would just never change.

                “So,” his mother began. She handed Brianne a specific shape of block that she had been pointing to that was out of reach, before turning toward Stewie and finishing with, “Are you seeing anybody special lately?”

                “Lois,” said Stewie, annoyed. He continued on, so as not traumatize Brianne by humiliating her grandmother in front of her by being too harsh, in a singsong voice. “Don’t do this, please.”

                “Do what?” Lois asked, feigning guilelessness.

                “Don’t play coy with me, woman. _You_ know.” Stewie cast a reproving look at his mother and climbed to his feet. He started out of the room, and to his displeasure, saw out of the corner of his eye that Lois was had risen from the floor, too, and was beginning to follow him.  

“You could just answer my question.”

                Stewie took a moment to unleash some of his building irritation with a quick clenching of his teeth before looking briefly at her over his shoulder as he continued to walk down the short corridor that led to the kitchen. “No. My adventures in the singles scene have left me pretty well convinced that there’s no one special to see.”

                They entered the kitchen and Lois gave him a sad look.

“You’ve always been too cynical, Stewie. Now, listen to me. Last week, I started talking to this real cutie at the health club. I think he might be somebody you’d like to meet.”

                Stewie snorted expressively. “Ha! Did you meet him in your senior aquatics class or the one for competitive mahjong?” He sighed. “Oh, Lois. You will forgive me if I don’t exactly trust your taste in men.”

                His mother looked defensive and went to say something else, but was interrupted by a series of quiet rattling sounds off to the side.

                Lois started in surprise, then turned to take in the sight of the young Hispanic woman standing over the sink. She’d just finished scrubbing and polishing it, and was busy putting the last of her cleaning supplies away.

                “Juana,” Stewie addressed Consuela’s niece, “it’s only forty-five minutes ‘til four, why don’t you just go ahead and take off now? I’m sure this place is spic and span enough for the time being.”

                “You pay me for rest of day?” asked Juana, in her usual broken English, despite the fact that she’d grown up in the States. Weird.

                “Huh?” asked Stewie, only somewhat attending to the conversation he’d started with his maid, having already moved on to getting himself an apple out of the fridge. In the background, Lois was now yammering about Brianne’s pre-pre-K, and how the things they were teaching her there were just plain unnecessary, and too big a strain on her brain, no matter how smart she was. She was only a year a half! And also, wouldn’t Stewie reconsider getting into the dating scene again? He could join a dating service or something. It was like tinfoil against Stewie’s teeth. Jaw tight, he attempted to tune her out as he responded to Juana. 

“Y-yeah, sure, whatever. Your paycheck will be for the same amount it always is on Friday.”

“I need more Citrus Lysol,” stated Juana, holding up the mostly empty bottle that was on the sink.

                “Oh, and is that going to come out of that check?”

                “Nooo…”

                Stewie rolled his eyes and proceeded to usher Juana out of the room. As she departed, he turned in agitation to his mother.

“Lois, don’t you perhaps have _anywhere_ else to be? Chris and Mallory have just had another child. Meg’s planning her wedding to the nudists’ son, Jeff. Surely you can make yourself useful to somebody else. It’s _got_ to be a more productive use of time than being here, lecturing _me_ about _my_ life. I assure you that I’m fully capable of handling my own business, thank you.”

                Lois looked hurt, as well as surprised by him flaring up on her like this.

                “Where’s all this coming from, Stewie? I was only trying to be helpful. What a way to treat your own mother. I _do_ visit Meg and Chris, you know I do. I just felt like seeing you and Brianne today.  And I also came here to tell you something. That is, I wasn’t _totally_ sure I was going to bring it up today. I was thinking of just keeping it to myself for a while. I told myself- hopefully, actually- that you might feel comfortable enough to reveal it to me on your own someday, but now I think I’ll share my little discovery with you.”

                Stewie had no idea what she was referring to, but her faintly taunting air had him even more nettled than before. Coolly, he encouraged her,

                “Pray go on.”

                “A couple weeks ago while I was trying to find stuff for our yard sale, I was going through some old boxes that were being stored in the attic. I came across a couple of photo albums and found some pictures I hadn’t seen in a very long time.” Lois looked weirdly triumphant to be imparting this piece of totally mundane information. Stewie raised his eyebrows at her, inviting her to continue.

                She did so, a confident but suddenly slightly sympathetic smile playing upon her lips.

“I’ve been trying to work it out for a while now, and it finally hit me. You know who Brianne looks like?”

                Stewie’s heartbeat stuttered and he felt his back stiffen. However, he told himself not to be ridiculous, and just to keep a poker face on. He laughed privately at himself a bit. There was no way in the world she could possibly be onto him.

                Smirking, he turned to her and offered drolly,

                “ _Me_?”

                “Well, yes, she does look quite a bit like you, Stewie. But you didn’t make her by yourself, and there are certain features she has that have always reminded me of somebody, but I only lately realized who. ”

                Trying to hide his slight discomfort, he clasped his hands vigorously together behind his back, and spoke calmly, presenting the perfect unruffled, sardonic front.

“Well? Why don’t you tell me? Who else does she look like?”

There was a certain exaltation in both her tone and her expression as Lois said, “She looks like Dylan.”

                This was not quite what Stewie had expected, but it was still a startling thing to hear come out of Lois’s mouth.  If she had, out of sheer dumb luck, stumbled upon at least the correct genetic line for Brianne’s other parent, she was kind of on the right track.

                After receiving no reaction to the observation that she had made, Lois prompted, “Do you remember? Brian’s son, Dylan?”

“Sure,” Stewie replied, nodding once, taken aback by how surreal this conversation was becoming.

“So…I was just wondering. Did Tracey have any other kids? Specifically a daughter? Or was it another relative of hers that you met at school?”

                Stewie half shook his head, but at the last second, turned the negative gesture into a nod. Lois looked back at him, uncomprehending. He mentally slapped himself and started to say something, which emerged only as a stupefied squeak. His mother raised an eyebrow and Stewie got even angrier with himself. Why couldn’t he just stay nonchalant? What was so different about this incident that he couldn’t lie about it just as smoothly as he had lied about countless things in his life before?

So. Was the sane thing to do here to go along with this idea that he’d fathered a daughter by some female member of Tracey’s family? That would delay the real story from coming home to roost for a while if not indefinitely, but then he’d have to come up with a name, and Lois might try to get in touch with Tracy to inquire after this relative of hers, wanting to know Brianne’s “mother”.

                _Calm down, just calm down, Stewart. You don’t have to tell her anything you don’t want to. You hold all the cards in this little game. She’ll never guess the truth in a million years, and no matter what lie you tell her, there’ll be a way to B.S. her later_ _and make everything easier on everybody. Especially you._

                He hadn’t even fully made up his mind to say it when he felt it slip out.

                “Mother, Brianne looks like Dylan because Dylan looks like Brian.”

                Now it was Lois’s turn to look stymied. Stewie wanted to laugh hysterically. He must say, this was the most bizarre situation he’d found himself in for as long as he could remember. Something that for years he’d held in the strictest secrecy, coming to light in the impulse of one supremely impetuous moment. He _should_ say that he was just kidding.

Unbidden, an image from far in the past rushed his mind: his own hands shrunken down to tiny things, grasping at and petting white fur, as the bed springs of Peter and Lois’s bed creaked rhythmically…

And he did what was perhaps against his good sense and repeated himself.

“Brianne looks like Brian.”

And just then, utterly ludicrous though it was, as he looked at his mother, Stewie thought he saw that Lois understood. Only for the space of a heartbeat, an intake of breath, it was as though he could her reminiscences of her son and their former dog- of the dog and boy’s closeness-  in her eyes. After that, she just looked stricken with incomprehension, just completely shell shocked.

                “There you go: I called you Mother.”

As she started to come back to herself, blinking rapidly, it was plain to see by her expression that she was trying to decide just which implied absurdity of her son’s that she wanted to tackle first.

Stewie decided that since he was in for a penny, he might as well be in for a pound, and went from implication to boldfaced statement.  

                “She’s Brian’s child.”

                Lois looked disgusted with him, but Stewie couldn’t discern what the reason behind this disgust was.

“That’s not funny. What in the hell, Stewie? Who even thinks like that?”

                Again, Stewie’s mouth spoke without consulting his brain first. The words left him in a mad, heated dash, skittering across the space between them like so many lethal verbal bullets.  He did not speak them loudly, but with a clear bite to them that kept the words unmistakably combative, if quaky.

“I don’t know. Maybe the person who slept with him on and off for many years, some of the most formative years of their life?” He almost couldn’t believe what was coming out of his mouth.

“Stewie, this is, this is _nuts_! You’re a man! You can’t have a baby!”

Stewie could tell, however, that while his mother was plainly flabbergasted by what her son was saying about having had a baby with another male, she was at least ten times more rattled by what he he’d said about having been with Brian. Finger placed in a symbol of faux thoughtfulness against his madly twitching lips, Stewie listened to her go on.

“ _Brian?_ Why would you stand here and say you had sex with our dog?! W-wait, not that this makes a hell of a lot more sense, but does that baby girl in the next room belong to _Meg_ and Brian, if you’re sticking by this claim that Brian’s her parent? So tell me, is Brianne even _yours_?”

                Stewie sneered. “Of course she’s mine. But part of what you say is true. I can’t have a baby, in the sense that having a baby means giving birth. I did not give birth.”

                Curiously, though, Lois seemed not to even have heard him. She was stuck on the whole my-child-had-a-long-running-sexual-affair-with-my-family-pet thing.

“You’re joking about sleeping with Brian,” she said, her voice quivering. Had he broken his mother’s brain? He felt giddy at the thought. However, in a matter of moments, his mirth had faded, and he could no longer could he keep his hostility in check. (Not that there hadn’t been an undercurrent of rudeness since she’d shown up at his apartment today, but that was keeping it in check for _him_.) He heard Brianne switch on the T.V. and figured he finally had the perfect opportunity to raise his voice a little and speak candidly. Glaring at his mother malevolently, he replied in an appropriately strident tone of voice,

                “Not at all. Cross my heart, hope to die. Wanna know how he was in bed, Mother? You must be curious, it’s only natural, I suppose, since- though the thought of it turns my stomach _violently_ \- it is what you could have had. Well, he actually wasn’t selfish, as one might fear.  On the contrary, besides a few occasions, he was quite eager to please. Oh, yes, he was _rather_ skilled at getting the job done.”

                “You slept with _Brian_? I- I- don’t even know how to process that! I…don’t believe it- can’t believe it! I refuse to-“

                Stewie felt a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth, but the satisfaction he felt at shocking his mother so much was fast being overshadowed by the fact that he was starting to feel rather lightheaded. Making his confession had apparently taken a lot out of him. He never would’ve expected to feel this enervated when the truth came out. Then again, he had never really expected the truth to come out at all. He reached out a boneless arm and felt for the edge of the countertop. He attempted to grab it and missed; his sweaty palm slid right off it.

“How long ago was this?” Lois demanded, and it sounded as if she was yelling at him from underwater.

He was swaying on his feet, and soon enough, his suspicion that he was about to pass out was confirmed. Somewhere in the back of his addled mind, he expected to feel the hard, blunt blow that would come when his head struck the linoleum, and that he was faintly surprised when it did not come was the last thought he had before he lost consciousness and all was dark.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

                Stewie was nearly asleep on the floor of his parents’ living room. While the rest of the assembled family had lost themselves in the movie, he, under Lois’s scowls, had been occupying his time by playing on his phone…until the recipient of his naughty messages told him to, **Buzz the hell off Stewie**. From then on, Stewie’d found it very hard not to give in to what his increasingly heavy eyelids wanted him to do. That was, until something startled him into full wakefulness.

                Genie had just startedtelling Aladdin, through song, that the soon-to-be former street rat had never had a friend like him, when Peter joined in on the musical number, his loud and annoying caterwauling interspersed with raves about his love for Robin Williams. Stewie, feeling suddenly in a theatrical mood himself, threw himself face forward onto the carpet and groaned loudly in a show of displeasure. God, his life was such a travesty!

He only sat up again when the doorbell rang.     

Lois raised a hand to her lips and looked alarmed.

                “Who could that be at this hour?”

                Peter finally shut his trap and also shut off the movie before he walked toward the door.

                “Are you going to answer it?” Lois asked, distressed.

                “Well, yeah. Why not?” inquired her husband, stopping in front of the door to turn around and look at her.

                “Well, it’s late-”

                Stewie made a noise of derision in the back of his throat that went unacknowledged.

                “-and who would be ringing our doorbell at such a late hour except someone who was doing it for a criminal reason? They’ll make up some phony excuse to make you let them in, and then it turns out that they’re some horrible sexual predator!”

                Stewie snorted with laughter and informed her piteously, “No one wants to do that with you, Mother.”

                “Oh ho ho, I beg to differ! Giggity!” came a voice, and everyone in the room but Peter jumped.

                “Glenn?” asked Lois, peering around the living room puzzledly, her brow even more creased than it ordinarily looked.

                “Hiya, Lois,” their former sexual deviant of a neighbor replied, and that’s when Lois, Chris, Meg, and Stewie realized his voice was coming from the phone.

“Hi,” she responded uncertainly. “How long have you been on speakerphone? Peter?”  She turned toward her husband for an answer.

                The doorbell rang again.

                “Since about ten minutes into the movie,” Peter replied. “I wanted him to hear my beautiful singing voice and also my message of friendship. I miss my friends.”  He had adopted a despairing, whiny tone much better suited for an eight year old as he pouted, sniffed, and shuffled his feet on the floor. However, he was able to take this crushed attitude and dial it all the way back to zero in the five seconds that then passed before he flung open the door and said hello to Kevin Swanson.

                “Hey, Mr. Griffin, sorry to bother you so late, but Connie and I could really use your ladder, if you wouldn’t mind loaning it to us. We need to replace the light bulb in the hallway outside little Joey’s  room. He uses it as his night light. No chair will reach it, since we remodeled the house and have those new high molded ceilings.”

                Meg huffed loudly and resentfully, despite the fact that she and Carl could afford ceilings just as high and molded if they chose.

                “Oh, sure thing, Kevin.” And Peter headed off to go find the ladder.

Peter and Lois were, in their dotage, the only members of the old guard still living on Spooner Street. Quagmire had been the first to leave. Five years ago, his knees had started to go so bad that he was having trouble performing even the simplest tasks around the house by himself, so he’d hired a live-in caregiver, but after making many lecherous advances on her, she’d retaliated by getting him ordered into a nursing home. Mort had retired to…where else? Florida, surprise, surprise. And Joe and Bonnie were now living in a retirement community in Providence, leaving their house to their son, Kevin. Kevin had, almost a year ago now, remarried. His new wife was somebody very familiar to Meg. She had been known to her in high school as Connie D’Amico. That had _not_ gone over well, Meg finding out that her ex-husband was to marry her high school tormentor. For a while, it had looked like she was going to revert to full-on Gangsta Meg, like that time she’d been in the slammer at seventeen. Since his marriage to Connie, Kevin had become a much more cheerful man than when Stewie’d had him for a brother-in-law. Back when he’d been married to Meg, he’d been in a really bad place in his life. Apparently, he’d never gotten enough therapy for his PTSD and for issues he’d always had with his father surrounding feelings of inadequacy, yada yada. This was all stuff Kevin had griped about to Stewie during a jolly night of family Christmas caroling years ago, right before Kevin broke up with Meg on New Year’s. Basically, even had he not been boozed up to within an inch of his life, it was still extremely doubtful that he’d been in any position to be making big, life-altering decisions such as whom to marry.

                “Now, now Meg,” said Stewie, smirking up at her. “I speak to you as someone who has experience dating men who have suffered from depression. Just because _you_ got him when he when he was a mess doesn’t mean you were cheated. Your time together wasn’t wasted as long as you learned something from each other. When a guy says he needs to get the hell away from you, believe him. Anyway, hanging around with a dude who threatens suicide? That’s no fun. And make no mistake. If he’d have gone through with it, it _would_ have been your fault.”

                “ _Stewie_!” Lois scolded, overhearing; he’d evidently gone too far with the Meg-bashing.  
              “Ah, well,” he said, stretching his arms out in front of him languidly and giving his knuckles a crack. “I’d best be going. There’s a Junior League bake sale tomorrow afternoon, and I’ve committed myself to making a pie for it. I’d like to get a good night’s sleep since I have to be up early to get that done before I go to work.”

                “Oh, but Stewie,” said his mother, “You don’t need to do that that. It just so happens that I baked several pies just this morning, and you’re more than welcome to one. I read in _Old Women’s Day_ that a good housewife of a certain age always has extra pies on hand. Well, what else do I have to do in this house?” She gave a little chuckle of self-pity. “Now of course I had to stow them in that secret mini fridge I keep hidden down in the basement so that your father doesn’t get at them. “

As if her baking could even compare to his! He’d have to take a pass on her offer; despite his frequent irritation at the continually multiplying duties he was expected to take on at the Junior League and the numerous bitchy attitudes he regularly had to contend with there, he’d rather like to remain a member.

                “Thank you kindly, but –” That was all he was able to get out before he noticed his mother slipping out of the room.

“Mother? Mother, where are you-“

                But Lois was already out of sight.

                Quagmire took this opportunity to say lasciviously,

                “Not to say I wouldn’t still be interested in also sampling _your_ pie, Meg.”

Meg burned bright red.

                “Shut up!” she ordered the elderly man furiously. “With the hundreds whores you’ve slept with since, how do you even remember what happened between us all those years ago? And don’t you have Alzheimer’s, too?!”

                “Hey, I may have Alzheimer’s, but at least I don’t have Alzheimer’s!” cackled Quagmire.

                Kevin was still standing in the door, pointedly ignoring the scene playing out in front of him.  Soon Peter reappeared, ready with the ladder to hand over to him.

“You know, I think I’d better call it a night, too,” said Chris, stretching and standing. “I’ve got to get up at the crack of dawn tomorrow…”

“I always get up at the crack of Dawn,” came the voice of Quagmire over the speakerphone. “You know, Dawn that one super hot blonde stripper with the eye patch and the bubble butt down at the Fuzzy Clam? W-wait, she might not work there anymore. In fact, I think she might be dead. It was either AID’s or a drive-by, I can’t remember which. But three guesses how she got the eye patch. Here’s a hint. Her face was Cape Canaveral, and I got a bit carried away and didn’t calculate like I should have done for my rocket’s landing. Oh!” His trademark excited exclamation of ‘Oh!’ then degenerated into a hacking cough. When that finally ended, he could be heard calling out to a nurse who must’ve been passing in the hall and asking for a sponge bath. She called back what must have been a favorable reply, because soon he was talking to the Griffins again and saying, “Y-yeah I gotta…I gotta scram, as well.”

“And me,” added Kevin hastily, raising a hand in farewell, then turning to leave.

                “Bye, Kevin! Bye, Glenn!” Lois called out, reentering the room, a round, foil-wrapped object in her hand as Peter shut the door and then went over to click off the speakerphone.

                “Well, anyway,” said Chris, heading toward the living room closet to retrieve his jacket. “Stewie’s not the only one who has stuff to do early in the morning. I have to be up at least by five and drive over to Cranston so I can supervise the final part of that backyard garden job. And then I have to drive back to Quahog for a meeting with another client at eleven thirty, then make that Lamaze class at one in the afternoon, and…”

                Stewie was so used to most of what Chris had to say being inane blathering that he’d been half tuning out his brother’s words; thus, it took a good many moments for him process what had just been said. Chris had already left the rest of the room in obvious shock.  Lois gasped.

                “Lamaze class? Why would you be going to a Lamaze class?”

                Chris froze like a…well, not like a _deer_ , more like a constipated water buffalo, in the headlights and smacked himself on the forehead.

 “ _I am such an idiot_!” he screeched angrily.

Stewie, however, was grateful for Chris’s slip-up.  Finally, something interesting was actually happening on Family Night, for the first time since he’d last brought a boyfriend to the weekly gathering.

                Chris looked around at his riveted siblings and parents, his expression defeated and guilty. He visibly sucked in a deep breath, then threw his arms out to the side and announced,

“Well, Mom…Dad…you’re going to be grandparents again!”

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

                “Stewie, how did I let you talk me into this? This is not wise; can’t we please just go?”

                “Oh, stop your grumpy grousing, Brian,” said Stewie, hanging onto the dog’s paw and pulling him along behind him. “There’s no way we weren’t going to the park tonight.”

In the shelter of a small stand of trees off to the side of the park’s playground, they sat together on a blanket spread out upon the grass, and having poured themselves each a glass of wine out of the bottle from the picnic basket they’d brought, began to indulge in a midnight drink.

“Do you remember,” Stewie quizzed, sporting a cheek-splitting grin, a sudden remembrance seizing him, “when you helped me make that box with the holes in the top made with a star-shaped hole puncher, and the flashlight inside so I could have stars on my ceiling?”

                Brian laughed.

“Just one of many examples of how I went to great lengths to amuse you when you were a child. I’m afraid they couldn’t compare to the stars tonight, though.”

Brian had accused him of bringing him here to the park to seduce him, and well, Stewie was guilty as charged. The bottom of his glass was suddenly up, he was downing nearly all that he had, and then he flung himself forward into the dog’s arm, kissing him heartily. Brian accepted the kiss, although he kept it brief, pulling back with a mildly admonishing look at Stewie. Stewie smiled sheepishly, and they went on to chat pleasantly about practically everything under the sun. Or moon, perhaps, in this case. Yes, a good variety of subjects were introduced, and they were all discussed animatedly, but only for a couple minutes apiece before they were interrupted with more kissing. At last Brian and Stewie found themselves locked in one particular embrace, their mouths joining together with a particular heat that said the build-up had become too much for both of them now. It took little more than a minute before the kissing started to turn rather steamy.

                “Okay, whoa whoa whoa,” Brian half-laughed, disengaging himself from Stewie’s arms and lips. “We’re only a few precarious steps away from a George Michael situation, here.”

                His companion laughed. “Don’t worry, Bry, I am quite above seducing you out here in the open of a public park. I think it would behoove us to be a bit more decorous tonight.” He leaned in close to the dog and lightly pinched one velvet-like ear between his teeth. “You’re going to fuck me in a nice, soft, comfy bed, honeymoon style. I think the situation demands it.”

In the car, Stewie placed a hand over Brian’s paw as it went to start the vehicle.

“I-I-I think…I understand it all now. Chalk it up to the benefit of time and distance.” He laughed a not entirely carefree laugh. “It’s funny, I…” He averted his eyes from Brian’s and took a fortifying breath. “It used to be that I always forgave you without understanding. I just… _had_ to forgive you, so it didn’t matter if I understood. Then eventually, the way I felt became the reverse. I started to see how it must have been for you in order for you to do the things that you did. I understood. But…still, for a long time, the possibility of forgiveness seemed rather remote. So, while I’ve had the understanding part down for a while now, I’ve had to really take some time to work on the forgiveness. But…I’m there now. I’m there absolutely, Brian. I just…wanted you to know that.”

He inhaled another shaky breath.  “Just…I still think you were wrong … _Don’t!_ ” he urged, seeing the canine about to interject, “I _know_ you realize that. I know you’ve already apologized for it.  I know you’ve been torn up over it, Bry.” His voice gentled as he spoke Brian’s name, and the dog gave a nod for the boy to go on. “Like I was saying,” Stewie continued, “you were wrong as all fucking hell and we both know it, so as you value your life, don’t you dare go doing that again. But I thought it was important you knew that you were understood. And that I’ve always had it in me to understand everything about you. That’s part of the reason that we belong together.  You’ve always been able to ‘get’ me, too. I just want you to know that you can _always_ come to me for understanding.”

                Brian didn’t say anything, but it seemed to take him more effort than normal to swallow as he stared at Stewie with eyes that were obviously moister than normal - even with him being a dog and naturally having eyes that always looked rather liquid-y.

Soon after, back at the house, Stewie warned, “Quiet going up the stairs”, pulling on Brian’s paw and leading him to the second level of the house and down the hall toward his- their- bedroom.

They were both trembling a little as they delved under the covers, touching, touching anywhere they could reach with feverish abandon, before their caresses became more about strategy, touching each other with more precision as they fell into tried-and-true methods of pleasuring one another and expressing their love. Stewie shivered to feel Brian first glide the pads of his paws over his nipples, and then switch to rubbing on them harder. Stewie responded by scratching behind the canine’s ear, employing that- to Brian- scintillating combination of affectionate and erotic. Brian moaned approvingly against his lip. Stewie ceased kissing the dog and sat back a little, smiling at his lover lying dazed and needful on the bed. He leant over and bestowed a passionate kiss to the bottom of Brian’s neck, then began trailing his lips down the length of Brian’s body.

After he kissed his way down the dog’s stomach, Stewie spent a good couple of minutes focusing on the area just around the groin, teasing around the hipbones with his lips and massaging the upper thighs sensually with his hands. All the while he kept an eye on just how just how high the flag was flying, so to speak. Once Brian was audibly panting, Stewie finally surrendered his campaign of torture by delayed gratification. His mouth wasted no more time in attaching to the dog’s cock. He took it in eagerly, giving it a hard suck that made his lover release a guttural groan and buck involuntarily into Stewie’s mouth. Stewie slid his lips up and down the shaft, varying suction level and speed. He released the organ briefly to gently mouth the canine’s balls. When he took Brian’s rod into his mouth again, he more or less dived onto it, driving it as deep as he could take it and using his throat muscles to pleasure the organ until he felt a sudden sharp pressure on his shoulder. Stewie knew what that meant, and felt slightly disappointed to have to give up his task, but knew by one look at Brian that the dog just couldn’t take anymore.

                He abandoned his undertaking, then, and lay back down again beside Brian. His lover cupped Stewie’s chin in his palm and they indulged in a slow, luxuriating kiss. When they came apart for air, Brian proceeded to shuffle backward on the bed. Bending forward, he ran his flat tongue over the head of Stewie’s penis.

Stewie gasped in happy surprise before relaxing back against the bed and letting Brian continue to work on him. It was heavenly, even though the dog was obviously out of practice. Hell, as far as that went, truthfully, Stewie was, too, but then he’d had much more experience overall giving head than Brian had ever had.

                He allowed himself a few minutes of getting the oral treatment from the dog. Being inside the hot and wet cavern of Brian’s mouth with the canine’s tongue steadily licking him up and down drove him to sweet distraction. When time started to stand still, he knew he had reached the point where it would be wise to tell Brian to move on. And so he, somewhat regretfully, murmured for him to stop, please, as he pulled gently on the canine’s ears. His lover got the drift, left of, and soon had crawled up the mattress and was leaning over Stewie,

                “Prep?” he asked in a quiet, husky voice. That one word was his shorthand way of asking how much Stewie required, wanted, and what kind.

                Stewie ordered him to slick his cock with the lube in the bedside drawer, and to be quick about it.

“I’m going to lose what’s left of my mind if you don’t hurry the hell up.”

                “Wow. Well, seeing as you’ve never had much sanity to start with, I’d _better_ hurry.” Brian’s breath was hot against Stewie’s ear as the canine leaned in close. He then dragged his whole tongue up the side of one of Stewie’s cheeks, leaving his lover conflicted as to whether he should feel disgusted with the excessive slobber or comforted both by nostalgia and the obvious  affection Brian meant by this action.

 “Very funny,” Stewie said, a little crossly because Brian still hadn’t entered him. He pushed down, rubbing against the member that was now resting teasingly at his entrance and tried to penetrate himself on it, but to no avail.

Brian laughed and pushed forward, sinking into him, and Stewie sort of mewled in gratitude. Not a moment was spared before Brian was moving in him, and Stewie was repetitively moaning softly but earnestly in thorough enjoyment at the sensation. Soon, Brian gave a particular thrust that had Stewie practically levitating off the bed and whimpering.

                “That’s the spot,” Stewie said hoarsely, as if Brian needed to be told. “Good memory.”

                “Nailed it,” Brian gloated, and managed to make contact, though direct hits and tantalizing strokes, with Stewie’s prostate a good percentage of the time as he pounded away at his writhing and very appreciative partner.

They had been with each other enough times to talk to each other without words while doing this (and, actually, in a number of scenarios outside of the bedroom, as well). Stewie squeezed the canine’s arms in an unspoken message to speed up. The dog had not forgotten how to speak and understand their system of communication of old, and obliged.

Stewie hissed and arched his back as his hands groped for the bars behind his head, fingers wrapping around them.

                “ _Yessss, you know how I like it_.”

“Mm, Stewie, _so_ damn good. It’s just so- Ahhhh! Fucking hell!” Brian practically shouted as Stewie clenched purposefully around the dog’s member. He began to fuck his lover even harder.

                “Shhh,” Stewie urged, then was obliged to bite his lip to keep his own loud exclamation from bliss from escaping. Having to stay quiet during sex had some benefits, though. As Brian battled to keep his sounds of pleasure from emerging from as sonorous, throaty moans, he forced them to emerge as low, animalistic growls instead. This was no less of a turn-on to Stewie than vociferous cries of enjoyment, and his body thrilled in delight of the sound. The sound of Brian’s growls carried straight to his groin, and Stewie’s toes curled into the satin sheets that, earlier today, he’d put on his bed in anticipation of this very fucking. The eroticism of it was almost unbearably delicious.  

                He grinded hard against Brian and panted out, “Just so you know, I will be sound proofing this room as soon as possible.”

                “Good,” Brian replied, still relentlessly fucking him.

“I love you,” Stewie murmured, because it rolled right off the tongue and felt sublimely good, like the most life affirming words in the world. He caressed Brian’s arms and an especially strong striking of his sweet spot had him practically levitating off the bed with a hiss of pleasure that whistled a little bit, and then he sighed. There was _nothing_ , nothing more stress relieving than this.  Yet he wouldn’t let himself relax entirely. Indeed, he was straining quite a bit. He was trying to hold back as best as he could, wanting to make the experience last for as long as possible. But he could tell that Brian was close and waiting for Stewie to shatter into a million little pieces first, and it just seemed like bad form to make him hold off his orgasm much longer.

“I know,” said Brian in response to Stewie’s tender statement.  “I love you, too…so…much.”       Soon, Stewie reached the end of his line, the apex of his experience hitting him with breathtaking force.

                “ _God, yes, Brian!_ ” he- there was no other word for it- squeaked, as he succumbed to the wonderful pull of completion, and then the pleasant vibrations of aftershock through his body. He was satiated and rather drained. Drained yes, but he didn’t let that interfere with seeing to the last of his lover’s needs. He continued to caress whatever part of Brian he could reach, lift his hips to meet his thrusting, and whisper dirty words of encouragement into his ear. When Brian achieved his own climax, kissing Stewie roughly to muffle the accompanying cry of ecstasy, Stewie kept squeezing around Brian’s shaft to milk that dog for all he was worth, savoring the much-loved flood of warmth as his partner released into him.

                Brian fell down beside Stewie, and they lay together wrapped in a cocoon of unadulterated satisfaction. For a long time, neither moved, and when the dog finally did, so happily zoned out in post coital land was Stewie that it took him several  moments to register that Brian was slowly lapping at the back of his neck.

Smiling, Stewie flipped over and patted the top of the dog’s head before shimmying down the mattress until he was at eye level with Brian’s chest. He  took a moment or two to lick determinedly, cleaning  away some of his own essence and receiving a few white hairs stuck to his tongue for his trouble, but the action made Brian watch him with rapture and shudder a little bit, so Stewie figured it was worth it, anyway.

He fell back against his pillow, back to Brian so he could pick the hairs off of his tongue discreetly. He then closed his eyes with a sigh. He felt like he could believe in his happiness now. Life, which had formerly seemed to promise so few charms for his existence, now teemed with a wealth of possibilities- and at the core of all of them, an intense love built on solid ground, for once.

The dog moved over to kiss Stewie’s shoulder before withdrawing back to the other side of the bed. Stewie heard him turn over and sigh contentedly, shifting a little as he moved into his desired sleeping position. Stewie let out a large yawn, and then shut his mouth with a smile.

The dark closed in on them like a blanket, and Stewie basked in the security of the knowledge of their mutual love, enveloped in a peaceful sleep full of dreams for the future. 

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

                “Oh, uh, hey.”

                Stewie peaked out from beneath the dining room table, filled with apprehension. He cursed himself for allowing this accident to happen. He _had_ to come into this room. He couldn’t have vanished to the basement, or just run out of the house.

At dinner, he’d read in the miserable cur’s eyes that Brian would corner him that night to speak to him. It was the first time the intolerable creature had looked directly at Stewie in a fortnight.  He had immediately resolved to make himself unavailable for whatever little ‘talk’ Brian had planned. He had intended to let Lois put him to bed, take a short nap, then slip out of the house and go pass the rest of the night in a hotel or something. However, when Lois had taken him upstairs shortly after the meal was over to get him put to bed, he’d fallen into a deep sleep that wouldn’t let him out of its clutches until the hour was more advanced than he had planned for. Peter and Lois would be going to bed soon, leaving Brian free to seek out his company.

                Stewie had hurriedly climbed out of bed, left his room, and started to tiptoe down the stairs when he heard Peter and Lois’s door quietly open and shut. At that point, Stewie went from tiptoeing to sprinting down the half dozen remaining steps. It wasn’t until he stopped at the bottom that he realized that a figure was sitting on the couch in the dark. A canine figure. Luckily, he wasn’t looking in Stewie’s direction, and the child, without really thinking straight and just knowing that he had to hightail it out of there, ran for the dining room.

                It seemed almost too dreadful to be true, but then, that had been the pattern of Stewie’s life lately. Five minutes later, he heard the dog coming toward the dining room, and scurried to hide under the table. He heard Brian approach, heard him pull out a chair and climb up onto it.

                And then Brian had to go and drop an orange. Which rolled under the table.

“So, hey, um…we’re talking again,” said Brian, with a positively infuriating note of lightness in his stupid voice. Like he thought he could jest with the boy in the old friendly fashion, after what that heartless canine had gone and done.

                “Don’t get used to it,” Stewie spat out bitterly, climbing out from beneath the tablecloth and standing up straight. He brushed his hands down the front of his clothes and then dusted his hands together.

“Can’t,” said Brian, always the voice of practicality. “I’m leaving, remember?”

                His tone sounded grieved, but detached somehow. Stewie didn’t understand any of it.

 “Look, Stewie, I just didn’t want to go with you giving me the silent treatment, alright?”

                “You can’t control that. And that’s all I’m going to say. I am now going to resume not speaking to you.”

Brian nodded in concession. “Um, okay, but maybe you’d be willing to just listen?” He was giving the classic sad puppy look, and he took a step closer to the boy.

“Nuh uh uh,” Stewie, immediately forgetting his assertion that he would be silent, said in a voice like flint. “Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. You can go to hell instead.”

Brian, typically, did not acquiesce to Stewie’s wishes.

“Our relationship, Stewie…has been complicated, to say the least.” It was like the dog was treating him with kid gloves, the way he imbued his words with such a density of compassion. “Always, really. Now, I know that when…well…when it was in its most recent, er…state, you didn’t see it that way… as complicated…”

Then, at once, the every trace of sympathy seemed to drain from his tone and he sounded very bitter. “How long was this supposed to continue, hmm? C’mon, you’re a smart guy, Stewie. In fact, you’re the smartest guy I know, and you _must_ have thought about this before.  Is this _really_ a relationship without an expiration date? What were you dreaming about? That we’d date until you’re eighteen, at which point we’d then get married? Is that how you saw this going?” he scoffed. Stewie flinched. The canine raked an agitated paw through the fur on top of his head and down to the nape of his neck. “I won’t even be around that long, Stewie.”

                Stewie was filled with sorrow and rage. Why did Brian have to go and bring the whole dog life span up? He’d danced around this point before during that awful conversation in which he’d ended their relationship. On top of, out of the blue, pulling some nonsense out of his ass about how he felt like he was losing himself, and how Stewie wasn’t ready for a relationship like theirs. When Stewie had justifiably blown up at him for this, asking how three years old could possibly be too young when two years old wasn’t, Brian had been beyond dismissive, claiming Stewie had just made his point about being too young. “This isn’t how you handle a break-up,” he’d said. He’d then added that , however much Stewie wasn’t equipped to deal with a break-up, it was all the more crucial that Brian move out of the house and take off for parts unknown, because what the child was even less equipped to deal with was the death of a lover.  That had been one thing that Stewie had had absolutely no response to, for he hated with as much intensity as was in him to even think for a moment about how short dog lives were compared to human ones. Usually when he did think about it, he would start thinking up possible ways to prevent Brian from dying so soon. Unfortunately, he’d been able to plan out nothing concrete yet. But _should_ the worst happen, Stewie knew he owed it to Brian to be there to see him through the very final moments. And he would have.

If only it didn’t have to be like that, though! Because Stewie _did_ want to be with Brian forever.  But the boy knew that he could never tell Brian that, because Brian would either just laugh at him, or give him one of those horrible, pitying looks that he was so fond of bestowing on the child lately, those that said ‘you are so pathetic’ as clearly as a laugh would, just in a different way.

Brian had made it all too clear that he, plain and simple, wasn’t interested in playing pretend anymore.

Stewie struggled for an intelligent, impactful response to what his ex-lover had just said. To his chagrin, none would come.

It was just then that he noticed Brian was clutching an envelope in one of his paws. The child gestured to it.

                “What’s that?” he asked dully. He was pretty sure that he already knew.

                “A letter for the family,” replied Brian in a similar tone. “I couldn’t bear to tell them in person. I thought maybe…if I took the time to sit down and, uh, really think it through, I’d be able to say it better, and it…would…” He took in an audible breath, then emitted a sound that suggested that he had choked on it. He paused for a long time and walked back over to the table, climbed atop a chair. He put the letter on the table, using an orange to weigh it down. He then trudged back over Stewie.

At last, Brian finished, wincing, “Make less of a scene.”

“A letter for the family,” Stewie sneered contemptuously, as well as a little incredulously. He thought of the letter which he himself had penned. He’d written it in a state of sheer frustration and anguish to his beloved and despised family dog, right after Brian had confided to him that he was planning on leaving town. The infernal fleabag probably hadn’t even deigned to read it, though.

_You never did fucking understand, did you?_

_No matter how decent you always were to people, no matter how refined your sense of fair play in most matters, the way you liked to pride yourself on doing the “right” thing…how good of a person can you be when you’re so ready- again and again- to throw over the one who loves you most?_

He cocked his head to one side and regarded Brian dubiously while stealing a sidelong glance at the suitcase that was on the floor beside the dog. “So…I’m in the family. Is there some part in there for me, then? At least one fifth of it should be designated as the space for your farewell to the baby of the house, right?”

                “Well, I, uh, I just told Lois to tell you…when you’re older…to remind you…that I did care about you very deeply.”

A jumble of emotions ran through Stewie, not for the first time in the week since Brian had dumped him. Also not for the first time, outrage was foremost among them. Lois?! Why the hell would he tell Lois?! Involve her in it… _this!_ Their feelings for each other! How could he?

Did Brian believe that Stewie would cease to remember him and their relationship one day? Well, what an incurable fool. Stewie knew better. He’d remember everything, he couldn’t be more fully convinced.

Would that he wasn’t. Would that he be able to someday simply forget  how deeply in love he had been, and how brutally he’d gotten screwed over.

He really should hate Brian for all the agony the stupid mongrel was causing him; in fact, in this moment, Stewie was pretty positive that he half did. The dog had, after all, used him. Mercilessly. Stewie had given Brian all his love, and in the end had been little more than a mere diversion. It left the child feeling so empty on the inside, a devastation that made him almost feel like he could lie down and die, though he’d never give Brian the satisfaction.

                “Stewie.” The canine interrupted the child’s thoughts. His voice was terse and yet faraway. “When you think about it, kid, we…we had a good run. Believe me, I do hate that it had to end like this. Even though, in light of everything that’s happened, this is the best of all possible ways. I think you’ll understand that someday. ”

Stewie did his best to fix the mutt with a glacial stare. It may have worked. Brian ducked his head awkwardly before he spoke again.

“I know how much it’s been hurting you and that you don’t have the best opinion of me right now, but believe it or not, I have every interest in not prolonging your torture. This is the least I can do for you now.”

                _‘A good run’? A good fucking run?!_

Stewie’s mind was stuck back there.

Brian could talk all the piffling, insincere, condescending, and inaccurate claptrap he wanted. To Stewie, it all just added up to Brian saying that Stewie not being good enough for him. He would never again believe anything that abhorrent animal said.

And he certainly wasn’t going to beg him to stay.

His pride wouldn’t take it. He’d already done enough pleading with the canine. Besides, the dog was right about something. Brian couldn’t stay and _not_ be with Stewie. Stewie simply wouldn’t be able to handle that. Their friendship would be over. Much as it was over now, only if they had to go on for much longer living as they had been since the break-up…well Stewie wouldn’t be held responsible for his actions.

                Thus, Stewie did not argue when Brian said,

                "I have to leave."

                "Yes, you do," agreed the boy matter-of-factly. He knew he wouldn’t be able to breathe as soon as Brian was gone. Until then, though, he _had_ to hold it together.Brian had already seen him fall apart too many times long past the point that he’d stopped deserving that privilege _._

                The toddler went to the front door and stood beside it. He turned his head to the side, wagged it in the direction of the door, and said simply,

                “There you are.”

                Brian looked toward the portal through which he would exit the Griffins’ lives with his shoulders slumped and a nauseated look on his face. Then, suddenly, he took a step forward. Then another. Then another.

                Stewie was still standing beside the door. He decided that he could say it, as long as he said it with dignity.

                “I will love you every day for the rest of my life.”

                The pain in Brian’s eyes angered the child anew. How dare Brian inflict injury upon _Stewie_ and then act like he himself was the victim?

The dog looked like he was thinking of pulling Stewie into a hug, but that was the last thing the child wanted, if it was only going to be a hug goodbye, or some other gesture that was just about the canine making his own shitty self feel better.

                However, Brian did not make a move to embrace Stewie, and the boy’s anger turned toward himself- he felt like slapping himself when he realized that he was disappointed. Suddenly, though, it became the most important thing in the world to drum up the memory of the last touch he and Brian had shared. Over the course of their relationship, especially since it had become carnal, their touches had been too numerous and too thoughtless, and in the end it was hopeless; he could not think of it, and he felt like a failure. He did remember the last time that they had been intimate with one another. It had been about three weeks ago, and Brian _had_ seemed less than totally into it, which was very unusual. While not giving an ineffective performance, he’d behaved as though he was just going through the motions. Later he’d attributed his ‘off’ behavior to stomach cramps he’d gotten from the Indian restaurant they’d been to earlier in the evening.

                Stewie was the first one to break eye contact, switching his gaze to his shoes. He heard the door open and did not look up.  His eyes remained downcast, trained on a low point so that all he was able to see of Brian’s departure was a pair of furry white feet walking out onto the porch.

The door clicked shut behind the dog. That quiet, subdued, mundane noise was sickening in its lack of drama, the light sound too much at odds with the crushing weight of the moment, like the whimper with which Stewie’s world would end. The child remained for some time staring at the door, hands balled into fists at his sides, making his sharp toddler fingernails dig into his palms in resolution. He would not be a total weakling about this. If he cried one more time over Brian, it would hurt even more than holding it in, as he wasn’t entirely sure he could bear the exertion that crying as hard as he was dying to required.

He turned numbly from the door and headed for the stairs. He made it to the foot of them before he found that he simply couldn’t go any further. He had no strength to climb. He sat down on the floor and broke down into a devastated bout of riotous, convulsing sobbing.

 

_To be continued…_


	5. Installment 5

**Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Family Guy and intend no copyright infringement.**

** Parking **

**Or, Time Enough**

**Installment 5**

            Stewie anxiously walked up and down the length of the waiting room of the hospital’s prenatal wing, clutching his cell phone in his hand. It was twenty minutes ago that Juana had called to say the time had come; it was time for her to leave for the hospital. Why the deuce wasn’t she there yet?! He tried to be sensible and put it down to Esmeralda’s driving (which was infuriatingly snail-paced), instead of beginning to ponder the possibility of disaster having struck the woman who was carrying his child…carrying _Brian’s_ child. He strode to the window and tapped his fingers against the pane restlessly. He should have kidnapped the ridiculous girl and forced her to stay with him until the baby came.  

The young man groaned and eased himself down upon a nearby chair which leaned against the wall facing the entrance to the room, with a full few of the elevators out in the corridor. He was very tired. Any expectant father may feel that way, worn out by excitement and stress that would presumably give way to a feeling of great happiness once his baby was brought into the world…before turning back to excitement and stress again. However, Stewie was hardly your standard daddy-to-be. A good deal of his exhaustion and discomfort was due to the rapid and radical changes his body had underwent in order to furnish an ingredient to produce this baby meant- though he’d be back to his old stamina  in time- he got more easily tired out than he did before he’d temporarily had internal female sex organs. These he had given to himself- by a special drug he’d developed himself- for the sole purposes of production of eggs. After that it had been a simple matter of combining them with the stolen sperm of his former lover, and implanting the fertilized embryos in Juana. Oh, Juana was an absolute godsend. He’d met her on the bus up to NYU when he was starting his junior year. She was going there to take a job in the cafeteria, and also to take ESL classes. By the time that Stewie had completed his baccalaureate, and had decided that instead of continuing on to get his master’s, he was going to find some way to have Brian’s baby, Juana had been laid off from the cafeteria. It had made her very sad back then, while making Stewie quite celebratory, for he now had something to bargain with when approaching a woman with the proposal to be an oven for hire. Well, technically, he didn’t have anything to offer yet, but since Stewie had a million ways at his disposal in which he could make money, it wouldn’t be a problem. 

He sat up straight, tense and rabid with complete attention upon seeing a light bounce up the floor indicators above the elevator, showing that the lift was moving skyward. The _ding!_ of an elevator arriving could be heard, and when the doors opened up, Juana, looking sweaty and as though she was in considerable pain, emerged, being pushed in a wheelchair, and accompanied by a doctor, a nurse, an orderly, and her mother, Esmeralda. Stewie rocketed to his feet and flew over to them. A brief, hurried exchange with the newcomers informed him that the foolish girl had waited so long to come to the hospital that within an hour she should be dilated enough to begin pushing. She was then wheeled off to the room in which she would eventually deliver the baby. Stewie, as the father (well, _a_ father of the child- and in a very real way, the mother, but that wasn’t common knowledge) of the child, could go in whenever he liked, but he needed a moment to compose himself. He started pacing again, clasping his hands in front of him and cracking his knuckles in a nervous gesture.

            “You better keep your word,” said Esmeralda, wagging a finger at him. “When Juana move to Quahog, you give her job.”

            “Relax, mamacita,” said Stewie sarcastically. “I’m a man of my word.”       Esmeralda glared at him.

            “You should no use words you no sure what they mean. Madrecita. Madrecita. But I no dear to you. And I not your mamma. And you no try talk sexy to me, either, so no mamacita.”

            Stewie chortled at the idea of making a pass at her. Then he looked back at his surrogate’s mother and returned her glare spiritedly.

“Why are you even here? Juana’s a big girl, she doesn’t need you. This isn’t even your grandchild!”

            “If I was your mother, you not be talking to me like this,” Esmeralda said reproachfully. 

“If you were my mother, I’d pop you one,” Stewie retorted, falling back exhaustedly into the chair he’d previously been occupying.

                                                                                               

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

 

            “Now where is your smile?” Stewie asked Brianne, leading his four-year-old daughter by the hand into Quahog Park for that year’s annual Easter egg hunt. He reached down with his other hand and prodded at a corner of her downturned mouth. “My word, did it pack up and leave ahead of schedule for sunny California? You seemed happy enough at home.”

            “That’s because,” sighed Brianne expansively, “ _at home_ I was _given_ a chocolate rabbit, no questions asked, whereas here I am asked to forage around for them like one of the babes abandoned in the woods.”

“Well, that’s the name of the game,” Stewie replied unsympathetically, squeezing her hand and picking up his stride, compelling his daughter to walk faster beside him. “Except these aren’t the woods. Stop being so melodramatic. C’mon. Everyone’s waiting, and the hunt starts in fifteen minutes. You don’t know how lucky you are, Brianne, to have parents who see to it that you go to such things. You may not know it yet, but you don’t want to miss out. I’ve always wanted my little girl to have a storybook childhood, goddammit.”

 The little girl’s eyes wandered over the scene around and spread out before her; families trickling into the park, the crowd becoming denser the further to the center that they got. Stewie instantly knew that she was counting the children. He saw her take in the sight of a mother and father with six children, and her brows pinched in so close together they almost looked like they were touching. 

They hadn’t walked too far into the park before they began to espy balloons tied to rails, trees, and shrubs, signaling they were getting close to the site of the event. Standing off the side, a half dozen yards or so from the starting line were Peter and Lois. Stewie greeted them with civility, then Lois bent down and kissed Brianne upon the cheek.

            “You’re going to have so much fun today, Brianne!” Lois enthused, taking hold of the child’s hand and merrily swinging it back and forth.

“Well, that would be nice,” the child deadpanned, twisting a pale bouncy curl around her finger lazily. “Are Vince and Selina here?”

            “They will be soon, sweetheart,” Lois reassured her, adjusting the red headband with a bow that Brianne always wore. 

            “Yeah, I think that’s them I see right now!” shouted Peter, pointing off in the direction from which Stewie and Brianne had just come. Sure enough, Chris, Mallory, Vince, and Selina were heading their way. The parents were both looking haggard, while their son and daughter were looking, respectively, grumpy and ecstatic. Nearly eight years old, Vince, with his pale orange hair, was rapidly becoming rather a thickset boy. His features were almost an exact facsimile of his Grandpa Peter’s. Two-year-old Selina had brown wavy locks which she wore in two pigtails, and she swung her Easter basket around and around on her arm. Stewie’s mouth pulled into a tight frown when he saw her; why couldn’t Brianne be behaving more like that? She had more reasons to be happy than Selina, that was for damn sure. Brianne was a hell of a lot cuter, when Selina had those bulbous eyes she got from Mallory, and the buck teeth she’d inherited from god knew where, and looked like an owl crossed with a beaver. It went without saying that Brianne was orders of magnitude smarter, too. And she was better dressed, also- Selina was outfitted like Pippy Longstocking today. 

As soon as Chris and Mallory had both hugged Peter and Lois, the younger Mrs. Griffin pulled out a tin of chewing tobacco from her purse, popped a bit of the stuff into her mouth, and began masticating away like the consummate lady. 

Out of nowhere, Lois began to applaud, a broad smile stretching her lips.

            “ _Ooo, kids_!” She exclaimed, bending down until she was eye level at least with Vince and Brianne. “It’s almost time for the egg hunt to start! Who’s gonna score the most stuff, huh? Don’t get too competitive, now, okay?”

            It was one of those hunts where the eggs were plastic, not real, and were filled with various goodies, or slips of paper that foretold of better goodies- larger toys, and bikes, and  gift certificates for the ice cream parlor, and the like- that you could redeem those pieces of paper for at the end of the hunt. 

“Oh, Mother, what a life lesson,” Stewie replied somewhat irritably. “Never mind that life lessons should never be gotten from a woman whose lipstick’s bleeding like a gaping axe wound. Brianne, you go out there and battle with everything you have.”

Mallory laid one of her clawed hands (painted what she must have decided was close enough to pastel yellow, in honor of spring, but was in reality very close to the color of urine) on the shoulder of each of her children, pulling them toward herself, then spun them around toward, getting in their faces to shout, 

“Yeeaahh, go kick some fucking ass, kids!”

            Lois shot her daughter-in-law a look of harshest disapproval, just like she’d never sworn in front of her own kids. The look caused Mallory to break down, quite immediately. Everyone, including her husband and children, took a step back from her when her lower lip began to protrude and tremble and her eyes glistened with tears of frustration. She looked at once wrathful and apologetic, furious and dejected. She spit some tobacco out upon the ground before crying,

“Oh, god, I don’t know why I do that! I- I just have, have these _urges_ to do inappropriate things at inappropriate times-”

            “That, my dear sis-in-law, in and of itself isn’t a problem,” Stewie interrupted, snorting, and faced some wary expressions from the rest of Mallory’s family for choosing to engage her. “That urge sees to it that you fit right in as a Griffin.”

            Mallory regarded him tiredly, though, that was all. 

            The officials who were there to supervise the egg hunt were approaching the starting line, and beginning to motion for some of the nearby children to gather closer. Seeing this, the whole family started to head that way, too.  

            “There are so many people here,” Brianne remarked. “It reminds me of when the news people came to the place where we used to live.”

            “You remember that?” Stewie questioned, intrigued to hear more about his daughter’s memories of that day. One never knew with Brianne, what she was going to remember or not. While Stewie could recall everything worth remembering from the very day that he was born onwards, there was no telling what all Brianne remembered, either from her infancy or more recent early days. She’d yet to mention a memory from before she could walk or talk, but to hear she could remember something that had taken place more than two years ago was indeed very interesting.

            The little girl nodded. “And then the people outside the building. That was even worse. There were so many gawkers hanging around out there. I wondered why they had to bother my father so much.”

“ _I_ wasn’t overly bothered,” said Stewie, grinning mischievously and squeezing her hand. 

Brianne cast him quite a judgmental look and shook her head.

“ _Daddy_ ,” she said, her voice dripping gold like honey. “Do _not_ take me letting go of your hand like I’m about to do as me conceding victory to you.” She then withdrew her little hand from her father’s and started to jog toward where the other children were lining up.

Stewie frowned and stopped her by taking hold of the sash of her dress and tugging her back ‘til she stood beside him again. 

            “How else am I supposed to take it?”

            Before his daughter could answer, though, Peter let out a cry of excitement. 

 “Didja hear that, Lois?” he asked his wife, grinning ear-to-ear. He then began to presumably repeat an announcement the egg hunt officials had given while Stewie had been busy talking to Brianne. “Kids under six get to have an adult go with them if they want, to help them with the hunt! I’m an adult!”

 “Chronologically only,” Stewie pointed out.

            “That means if I help out a little kid, I can go searchin’ for eggs, too, and maybe, just maybe, get lots of yummy treats and cool toys for myself! Ooo! Ooo! Ooo! Selina, sweetie, how would you like it if your Grandpa Peter gave you a little bit of a leg up- or should I say _egg up_ \- with this here hunt, huh?”

“Back off, Grandpa,” Vince intervened. “Dad’s paying me $10 to help my sis in the egg hunt.”

            “Sounds like the blind leading the blind,” observed Stewie.

            “Stewie, can I borrow Brianne?”

            “No, Father, I’m afraid not. Brianne’s not getting any help with this egg hunt. She may be young, but she is capable. I believe in starting early with small ways to make children independent.”

            “Well, then!” Peter declared in outrage. “I’ll just have to enter the egg hunt all by myself!” And he puffed out his chest and began to strut over to join the contestants. 

Lois groaned and slapped herself on the forehead. 

“Oh, my god, how are we going to keep him away from this? He’ll _ruin_ the egg hunt.” 

Then, out of the blue, a miracle transpired. Stewie knew that they sometimes did, as he’d witnessed a few himself. Still, one couldn’t depend on them, and what happened next was something none of the family would take for granted. Peter, while bounding up and down giddily on the balls of his feet while waiting for the hunt to start, suddenly lost his balance, and fell down. He landed on his hip, and let out a great shout of pain before breaking into piteous, obnoxious sobbing, tears streaming down his cheeks. His family all went running enough to him, Lois kneeling at his side. It was speedily determined that Peter had _not_ broken his hip, but Lois did call over an official and asked her if she could please go find some ice for it. While this was going on, Chris and Stewie gestured for Vince, Selina, and Brianne to take their places before the starting line. As a whistle sounded, and the egg hunt began, Lois returned to her family and addressed Stewie.

            “So, you guys have everything you need for your trip to L.A.?” 

            Mallory’s eyes lit up and Stewie suddenly found himself the subject of her undivided attention.

            “L.A.?”

            “Yes, um, we’re going to Los Angeles in a couple of days. Whole screenplay-development thing.”

            “Oh, that’s so amazing!” Mallory enthused, sounding like a totally different person than her usual self. Stewie had never her so look so alive. “I’ve always wanted to go to L.A.! Well, just California in general. It’s the Sunshine State! Omg, the weather! The beaches! The home of Hollywood! The home of California Casual! The happy, healthy, shiny people!” Her voice had turned into an elated squeal as she raved.

“Uh huh,” Stewie replied, a tad uncomfortably, obliged to look away from her and try to appear distracted in hopes she wouldn’t bother him anymore. He let his eyes swoop over the verdant plain and the swarm of children rushing over it. 

He gave himself time to be sure of it, but the area for the egg hunt wasn’t that big, and after a thorough scan, one thing was plain upon surveying it and all its young participants. 

            Brianne was nowhere to be seen.

            Stewie was only a tiny bit alarmed by this discovery. Mostly, he was annoyed. This day had started out pleasant enough, but after he sprang the surprise of the egg hunt on Brianne, the girl had gone inexplicably petulant on him. 

He proceeded to veer left, away from the marked area, and began his descent down a little slope to a small stand of trees off to the side of the park’s playground. His attention was drawn to one tree in particular, a large elm, with a gnarled and twisted trunk, its broad, heavily-foliaged branches forming a picturesque green canopy. And there Brianne sat beneath it, her flouncy white skirt with the tulip border fanned out around her, clutching a book in her hands, which she seemed much engrossed in.

“Bree, what on earth are you doing?” asked Stewie exasperatedly, lowering himself down on his haunches beside her. He craned his head and took in the title of the tome his little girl was clutching. It was _Great Expectations._

            “Reading a book,” replied his daughter distractedly, “I like it, but so far not as much as _The Old Curiosity Shop_.”

Stewie frowned at her severely. Brianne looked up and caught the expression upon his face. It appeared to surprise her. 

            “What? You said you wanted me to have a storybook childhood.”

            “Brianne-” Stewie started warningly.

“You read Dickens to me when I was a baby.” It was a statement, not a question, as the little girl held out the novel with the cover facing her father and drummed her fingers over Dickens’ name emblazoned on the hard-backed book. She raised both her brows at him and smiled.

“That’s right, I did,” agreed Stewie. He was learning quite a bit, today, it seemed, about what his little girl remembered, from things that had taken place a couple of years ago that probably ordinary children wouldn’t remember, to thing from her infancy that they certainly wouldn’t. His fascination aside, however, he decided he had better be a responsible parent and scolded, 

“Brianne Victoria Griffin, if you get that dress dirty-”

            She giggled in response to his stern tone.

“A little Shout will take it all out.”

 “Why do you have to be such a difficult child?”

            Brianne looked like her feelings were genuinely hurt a bit.

            “But I’m an angel.” She said this in a completely non-ironic tone that Stewie simultaneously took objection to and found, honestly, quite humorous. Ultimately, after giving it a brief, honest consideration, he had little choice but to concede that her statement was right enough.

“You’re right. You totally are.”  
            “Daddy,” Brianne began, and then surprised him with the question which followed, “would you have liked this at my age?”

            Stewie uttered a little laugh and looked at his daughter steadily, keeping a lightly wry note in his voice to prevent provoking her pity or too much curiosity.

“I wasn’t a very happy kid at your age, Bree-Bree.”

            His daughter frowned.

            “How come?”

            Stewie shook his head. 

            “Bah. It makes no difference. It’s long ago in the past, and anyway, has nothing to do with you. Let’s focus on today, shall we?”  

Brianne said nothing, only fingered the lace hems of her sleeves.

“You’re not me, and just because I wouldn’t have enjoyed this at your age, doesn’t mean I’m happy that you’ve ignored my wishes. It’s a blasted Easter egg hunt, Bree! I was thinking of you when I signed you up, and I happen to _know_ you play better with others than I did at your age. And now you’re never going to know if you would have had fun doing it, because you wouldn’t even give it a chance. Why couldn’t you have just done this one thing for me?”

“Daddy, enough already. I know what this is about,” declared his daughter, her face openly exasperated and sympathetic. “Things have been so good. Now you’re trying to make everything perfect. Please stop trying to force things. You’re getting carried away.”

            Stewie’s jaw dropped about a foot in disbelief. 

            “I will not be talked down to by my own daughter, who isn’t even in kindergarten yet!”

            Brianne gazed back at him, her features displaying a solemn expression, but her eyes twinkling with a damnable, vexatious mischief. She said nothing.

“Okay, look,” said Stewie, holding his hands palms forward in front of him, sick of this situation already. “Normally I wouldn’t let you get away with giving me a lecture, on the basic principle of respecting authority. But it’s a holiday, for goodness sake, and that means we’re going to cut back on the drama as much as we can. Ordinarily on such occasions, I’m in urgent need of some Anacin before the day’s out, and I don’t mean to proceed to the family quote-unquote ‘jubilations’ requiring half a bottle to start with. Besides, after this, as soon as we get to Grandma and Grandpa’s, you’ll be stuck with Vince and Selina all day up until after dinner. Now I know you have sketchy tastes sometimes, and so you like your cousins, but be forewarned. If you ask them to share their treats with you, they’ll turn into a pair of savage beasts. Vince will defend his candy to the death, and you’re fooling yourself if you think Selina, the avaricious little weasel, will share with you one little pack of jacks.”

Brianne didn’t look worried, and Stewie didn’t know if she was honestly that naïve, or if she was already devising a plan to outsmart them to get her hands on some of her cousins’ loot. 

He picked her up and carried her in his arms back to where their family was gathered, where, at her urging, he set her down. Vince and Selina were just finishing up the egg hunt with the rest of the children, running with baskets now containing their spoils toward the rest of the assemblage. Vince was waving around a voucher he’d found in one of his eggs, yelling that he’d won a motorized scooter. Peter cheered excitedly and asked if he could borrow it next weekend, causing Lois to intervene and tell him not with his hip. 

Brianne went to run toward her cousins, then stopped.

            “I have to correct you about something, Daddy.”

            “Oh, really? And what might that be?”

            Brianne smiled angelically, eyes hooded.

            “You said I’ll never know now whether I can enjoy an Easter egg hunt. That’s not true. The cutoff age is twelve. I’ve got lots more years I can be in the hunt. I might not ever want to, but since you have all those chances, you might really make me take part in one of them. After all, you are obstinate to a fault.”

            Her remark took him quite by surprise.

“Bree, where did you hear that from?”

            Brianne just shook her curls and smiled enigmatically. The rest of their family was starting to leave, so she went skipping up the path after them.

            Stewie shook his head, amused, and followed.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

 

            He was shaking as he sat in the car, fingers clutching the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip, the streetlight spotlighting his vehicle on a residential street where neat rows of nearly-identical houses sat with their placid, cape style edifices mocking his inner torment with their tranquility. Each and every one was quiet and dark, their windows shuttered to the night. What kind of a place _was_ this? He tried his best to push his tumultuous emotions to the side, focus, and think, just think. Something that shouldn’t be proving so difficult. Only this involved the one person who he could never contemplate with only cold and rational thought and nothing else. He’d been so gung-ho when he’d started out for here tonight. His eyes repeatedly flickered over one house in particular. He’d already soaked in every detail of the abode in question; now he studied the construction of the roof and the appearance of the trees closest to the dwelling. He didn’t have his grappling hook with him (Stupid! Stupid! Why would he ever leave home without it?) Maybe he could just fashion one out of…something, or simply leap from a convenient tree branch. He tried to determine if this would be a fruitful endeavor, or would only lead to his arrest. Even with how silent and dark these houses were, a neighborhood like this _had_ to be one with a neighborhood watch. As a matter of fact, him just sitting in his car for as long as he had had more than likely already made him the object of at least one individual’s paranoid surveillance.

            He wanted a cigarette like crazy.

            Stewie looked at himself in the rearview mirror, surprised at the urge. He’d shaken that particular monkey off his back a while ago. Certainly there had been times in his life when he’d smoked like a chimney, but he hadn’t had an addiction since he was four…well, and then again for a little bit when he was in high school. He told himself to stop thinking about nicotine and turned on the radio, scanning around for something…something to help him chill out. 

“… _and if I could, you know that I would fly away with you…”_

            He inhaled sharply and stabbed at the button to shut the radio off. A shiver ran through him. 

He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t go through with it.

It would be wrong to take this any further, just because he and Brian had lived and laughed and cried and loved together, just because Brian had featured in all of the best times of Stewie’s young life. Because he loved to feel Brian’s heart beat beneath his cheek as he rested it on the dog’s chest, Brian moving inside of him, Brian’s arms around him, _Brian’s mere goddamn presence there beside him like, at the same time, the rock that weighed him down, and the sun that illuminated his life. That **was** his life_. 

            Who was he to manipulate things to such an extent? There was more at stake here than simply his own interests, and he’d foolishly cast those other pertinent hazards to the side. But as he was often a selfish person at heart, the fact that this was so very risky even and chiefly to his own interests was what had him reversing his decision. He’d only had to allow himself a moment to be pessimistic, to seriously consider the possibility of replacing old heartbreak with new. What made him ever think that this going to work out alright? He’d reduced things to their simplest argument. He was stupid to think that he could do that. 

His mind was made up- changed completely after a ten minute interlude of fear-biased contemplation following half a day’s drive there. He started the car, used the driveway nearest him to turn around on the dead-end street, and drove away like a bat out of hell from the place he once couldn’t wait to get to. 

            It just wasn’t meant to be.

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

            He collapsed on top of the bed with a goofy smile. The spirit of the season always got him; he’d always been the yuletide’s bitch. And this Christmas had been the best in a very long stretch of time. In one hand he held a sprig of mistletoe pinched between his thumb and forefinger. Brian lay quiet and unmoving, but Stewie didn’t bother to extend any concern for his sleep and nudged the dog with his elbow.

            “Hey. Hey, Brian.”

            Brian just barely turned his head on the pillow on which it lay. He took in Stewie with eyes hooded in fatigue and irritation.

Smirking, Stewie held the mistletoe aloft, above his chest. Slowly, he began to move his hand lower, until he was dangling the sprig over his crotch. He moved his eyebrows up and down communicatively. 

            Brian snorted and slapped the mistletoe out of the boy’s hand.

            Stewie gave a nonchalant hum and stretched onto his side to face his lover. He was highly reluctant to be dissuaded by his boyfriend’s lack of a sense of humor. 

“Mm. Show me your yule log.”

            Brian tugged the pillow right out from underneath the boy reclining next to him and smote him across the face with it.

            “Does seeing that I’m depressed get you in the mood?”

            Stewie sneered at his companion. 

            “Oh, yes, _totally_ ,” he quipped. “It gets me hotter than a lava-spewing volcano baking in the July sun when I see you in a miserable funk. That’s why my arousal’s just been deflated, because I see that you are _not_ in a legitimately depressed mood- only a little glum. And I’m sure you have nothing to blame for that trifling glumness other than yourself, for indulging that turn in your mind which makes you invent and dwell on petty little existential crises.”

“I’ve given up everything for you.”

Stewie’s hands clenched into fists at his sides, and he looked away from the dog, squeezing his eyes shut. Why the hell was Brian doing this? To Stewie’s intense displeasure, he’d been talking like this more and more for the past couple months. Stewie knew that Brian missed being the so-called ‘voice of reason’ of the Griffin clan. All that trouble to leave and find his identity, only to decide that it was being “the glue that held the family together.’ _Well, tough, shit, Brian_ , Stewie thought angrily. Who was that mutt to claim to have given up everything? Stewie wanted to _be_ everything, damn it! Why wasn’t Brian saying that he had _gained_ everything by being with Stewie?! 

            “I wanted to spend Christmas with the family,” Brian said despondently. 

His companion slid over closer to him, and began to pet the top of the dog’s head.             He attempted to speak gently, but was unable to keep his vice _entirely_ devoid of an undertow of slight contempt.

“It won’t be long now. We can tell everybody everything, and somebody’s bound to forgive you sooner or later. You know, for defiling me and grossly betraying their trust and all.”

Brian leaned in close and growled against Stewie’s throat, right up against the pulse point. 

            “I could punch you right in that sadistic mouth of yours for being so fucking unsympathetic.”

            Stewie suddenly fell into a giggle fit, his laughter slowly rising into a hushed but high-pitched cackle.

“Do it, then.”

            His mirth evaporated in the next moment, however. He froze, and Brian froze, and the dog slowly backed away from him. Their eyes bore into each other’s, but Stewie, for his part, divined nothing from looking so intensely into Brian’s. His canine love’s did nothing but appear tired and distrait. 

Stewie squirmed, feeling awkward. Then he ventured, as casually as he could, 

            “About last night-”

            Brian cut him off, their voices overlapping slightly.

             “I’m never going to be okay with doing that to someone in the middle of sex. It just seems really messed up to me. We’ve done some rougher things during sex, but striking somebody across the face while I’m thrusting into them is different. It feels like a hate sex thing, and that just isn’t my bag. I would never sleep with someone I felt that many negative feelings toward.”

“Oh. Well. That’s good to know.”

“Why do you say it like that?” Brian sounded vaguely hostile. He squinted his eyes at the boy beside him. “Actually, why say it at all?”

Stewie turned away from the dog’s contemplation and sat up, twisting to reach the nightstand and retrieved a pack of cigs and a lighter hidden under a stack of _Scientific American_ ’s . It was a poorer hiding spot than he normally used for possessions he was trying to keep under wraps, but a pack of cigarettes was hardly on the same level of Top Secret as some of his stuff. And then, the most forbidden thing in this room was currently next to him in bed.

He turned back around to offer Brian a smoke, which the dog took after a short hesitation. 

“What? Don’t try to pretend you don’t smoke when you’re in a glum mood, I’ve seen you. You think you’re freakin’ Bogart with the smoking and the brooding.”

            “Stewie, the only Bogart film you’ve seen is _Casablanca._ ”

            “So? Isn’t he like that in a bunch of them?”

            Brian paused.

            “Yes.”

            “Anyway, remember when we were at Barnes and Noble, and you admitted you haven’t even made your way through their list of the classics? That doesn’t stop you from proclaiming yourself well-read in classic literature.”

            Expecting a barbed- or at least, fumblingly defensive- response, Stewie was surprised to find Brian instead gazing upon him with an affectionate look of tranquil satisfaction. The canine let out a hum of breath, and cut his eyes away from Stewie’s face, staring into middle space. He placed a paw over his companion’s groin and patted lazily. Stewie glanced at him curiously, owing to the oddness of the action. It did not seem to be a sexual advance. Brian still looked too languid for that. The canine soon lifted his paw from between Stewie’s legs and this time he patted the boy’s chest, above his heart, turning to look at him again.

            “God, do you even know how amazing you are?”

            Stewie’s mouth fell open a little bit, but he answered,

            “Yes.”

            Brian laughed. Stewie smiled at him. It had been part of Brian’s please-take-me-back speech, and he couldn’t deny that hearing that fall from his favorite douchey canine’s lip had been a singularly gratifying experience. Stewie rolled onto his side, facing the dog, and chucked him under his muzzle before kissing him on the nose. Time stood still as they gazed at each other adoringly.  

The sound of a female moaning in a highly sexual manner intruded upon their moment of emotional intimacy and caused them both to jump.

            “What in the world?” Stewie wondered out loud, glancing about and putting out his hand when he spotted Brian’s cell phone laying on the nightstand. He hadn’t noticed it before. He glanced back at Brian and said with a careful lightness, as his own fingers closed around the femininely moaning device, 

“That better not be somebody you’re cheating on me with.”

            “It’s not,” Brian scoffed, reaching to take the phone from Stewie’s hand. He opened the text and held up the phone to show his lover that somebody named Preston had sent him a message  

            “It’s…it’s kind of the new Peter, Joe, and Quagmire, if you will. I met these guys at a support group for individuals with depression. We used to go out every year and get hammered on Christmas Eve. After I moved back here, Preston said he’d make sure to send me a text on December 24th while he and the guys were out at the bar, to show me I hadn’t been forgotten. It’s nice he kept his word.” Brian smiled a little.

Stewie just nodded, and petted the top of his partner’s head, trying to make up his mind whether to mention to Brian that having the sound of a female crying out in ecstasy as his text alert disquieted him. He knew that Brian still found women attractive. Why wouldn’t he? He wasn’t gay. So why should he be upset that the dog would find a female’s carnal moan an appealing sound? He couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse, so this, paired with what he’d just learned about Brian’s depressives support group being quite a sobering thing, sealed his lips. 

Brian sighed, seemingly contentedly, while taking his paw and trailing it along Stewie’s arm.

            “If infidelity ever breaks up this relationship, it won’t be because it happened on my end.”

            Stewie immediately peeled Brian’s paw from his arm.

            “You douche pimple!”

            Stewie felt a blaze of indignation ignite within him and favored the canine with his most fearsome look. Brian, however, instead of seeming intimidated, burst into laughter. 

“Douche _pimple_?”

            The moment hadn’t been lightened, though, nearly as much for Stewie as it had for Brian.

            “Well, you’ve surpassed- or should I say, you’ve degraded yourself lower than a douche. You are now comparable to a pimple a douche might get. A disgusting, pus-filled blemish on the face of something that’s already a blemish on the face of humanity. How dare you _accuse_ me-”

            “Hey, hey, hang on there. I wasn’t accusing you of anything.”

            “You know you damn well were! Or at least, you were implying that you think I might stray! I’m getting real fed up with this recent hobby of yours: will-he-or-won’t-he-cheat! Just because you found out a little something about what I was up to while you were gone- big whoop! How many bimbos and sluts and slutty bimbos did you bang while we were apart, hmm? And just because my high school is filled with beautiful teenage boys doesn’t give you a good reason to suspect me, either. I gave up the likes of them to be with _you_! Also, I can’t _believe_ that you’ve been actively trying to spoil Christmas all day! You _know_ how much I love Christmas! Why would you try to ruin it for me? You’ve been so much more of Grinch than you ever have in the past, and for what? You’re in love and in a good relationship this year! Well, tomorrow’s the actual holiday itself, and we’re going to have a grand time, even if- and yes, we will have to stay away from the family. We’re going to go out and eat Chinese food with the Jews, and you’re going to like it!” 

            Brian looked a little scared. It wasn’t like him to be cowed so easily. He looked Stewie in the eye and nodded vigorously in agreement. Stewie was startled by such ready compliance, but hell if he wasn’t going to roll along with it. 

            They both leaned in, and their lips met in the middle.

            They parted, and Stewie shut his eyes, willing himself to let go of all of the tension he was currently carrying- tension that was begging for an outlet in the form of a fight. It was his sign of a truce.

            They both got settled into their sleeping positions, and for a long time, all was quiet. Then, just as Stewie was inches away from being out like a light, Brian’s voice broke the silence, low and remote and possibly even dream-addled, but rising to hang ominously above the bed they so illicitly shared that Christmas Eve,

“Have we hurt each other too much?” 

They had. They had each, on various occasions- the vast majority of them in the distant past, although both of them were guilty of the recent infrequent slip-up- injudiciously attempted to punish the other for something, something they perceived as going over the line, and in so doing, gone over the line themselves. 

Sometimes Stewie wondered if this relationship was tainted. Maybe it was _too_ tainted. However, he was just…committed. Maybe he ought to _be_ committed to a mental institution. 

He spoke, sounding much more lackadaisical than he felt.

“I don’t know.”

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

“I’m telling you,” insisted Meg, buttoning up her coat, “this evening wouldn’t have been as much of a bust if we’d gone to the mini mart.” 

Lois was busy tidying up the place as her offspring prepared to leave, and she stopped in the middle of wiping down the end table where someone had forgotten to use a coaster ( _Oops_ , Stewie thought to himself. _I’m such a naughty little imp. Shame on me_ ), to look insulted by Meg’s words. She could never comprehend that any time she entertained the evening would turn out to be a dud, but she didn’t saying anything, opting instead to silently go about her business. After learning that not only was she about to have another grandchild- who would live in town, no less- but that she’d be seeing a lot more of two of the ones she already had, nothing could take the glow off her face. Which was really saying something, and definitely something she could use, when ordinarily her complexion had all the luster of extremely dull crepe paper. 

But while Lois could take blame for a lot of things (at that moment bustling out of the room and making sure to “accidentally” bump Meg with her hip on the way out), one thing she couldn’t take blame for was  his evening becoming about sitting around while Chris told them all of the circumstances which had brought about such a momentous change in his domestic situation. And that development had resulted in a more interesting night than these Sundays normally were, anyway. 

“Why are you complaining about tonight?” Chris wanted to know. He was finally putting on the jacket he’d picked up thirty minutes ago. He’d had quite an explanation to give his parents and siblings, quite the story to tell. It seemed that some eight months ago, he’d been contacted by Mallory, and asked to fly out to Fresno, California. He had done so, her insistence that it was of the utmost importance making it impossible to refuse, not to mention the incentive of getting to spend time with the children he so rarely saw. Upon his arrival, he’d encountered a Mallory who begged him for forgiveness. Oh, she hadn’t wanted to get back together with him. No, she was seeing another man, and it was very serious. She was in love- “for real this time,” she’d been kind enough to inform Chris. She and this new guy were planning on moving to Providence in November, when he’d be taking a job there. He had evidently been a good influence on her, successfully persuading her to enter therapy to deal with her manifold issues, and to make sure the children saw a psychologist, too, for all their mother had put them through. And who should the children’s therapist be but Chris’s on-and-off girlfriend from his youth, Sandy, the grandniece of Herbert the Pervert. Coincidentally, she had then been residing in Fresno, too. Her career as a therapist had been inspired by the great number of children she’d known who had been compelled to start therapy as a result of knowing her Great Uncle Herbert. She’d become reacquainted with Chris when he went to pick Vince and Selina up from one of their sessions, and from that point on, for every day Chris spent during his 5-day trip to Fresno, the daylight hours he spent with his children, while every night he spent with Sandy. They’d fallen in love all over again, but Chris had his business back in Rhode Island, and his parents, siblings, and friends, and so had returned to Quahog as scheduled. He and Sandy had kept up their relationship long distance, online and via phone calls, with occasional flying back and forth for the weekend done by both parties, when one day about a month ago, Sandy had herself had shown up unannounced at Chris’s door, with the news that she was pregnant. Heavily pregnant. So pregnant she’d had to take a train to Quahog. She’d admitted to being surprised, apparently, when Chris hadn’t noticed her weight gain the last time he’d visited. She’d thought he’d figure it out for himself, After a long talk, Sandy decided to move back to Quahog, and she and Chris had been together ever since. They planned to get married after the baby was born. Chris had just been waiting for the right time to tell everyone this; preferably on a night when Sandy could be there herself. Tonight she had to work late at her new job as a counselor at the Boys and Girls Home. 

“Why the hell would you want _me_ to come to the mini mart?” Chris went on. “I thought you said I monopolized your husband’s attention. You know, because I’m much more fun to talk to? Throw Stewie into the mix, and Carl will be chasing him around, trying to get him to put on one of the wigs from that wax figure collection of Hollywood starlets   he keeps in your precious back room, because Stewie’s ten times more like a woman than what he’s married to.” 

This was actually quite a disturbing visual to both Stewie and Meg, but the latter was the one who in addition to cringing, reacted in anger. She threw up her hands and spoke with heavy sarcasm. 

            “Wonderful. Is everybody done so I can go home?”

“Just one more thing,” said Stewie. “In that blue coat you look like Thomas the Tank Engine.”

            Meg huffed and Stewie expected to see steam come out of her ears. He and Chris high-fived. Stewie then clapped his brother on the shoulder and told him sincerely,

            “I wish you every joy with Sandy and congratulations on the new baby. Also, good luck with the Mallory situation when she and the kids move back here.”

            “Yeah, seriously, Chris, good luck,” muttered Meg, shouldering her purse. She opened the door and looked out into the night. 

“Oh, fuck. Chris, you’re blocking me in!”

            “Well, god, I’ll move my car, then! Why do you always have to whine about everything?!” Chris asked…well, more like whined.

As the door shut behind his bickering siblings, Peter lumbered into the room, working on unbuckling his belt.

            “Well, that’s a night, then,” he said, evidently to no one in particular. He didn’t seem to notice that Stewie was still in the room. Eyes fixed on the pants he was busy taking off, he lowered them and then shuffled with them down around his ankles to the bottom step of the staircase, where he sat, grunting and groaning over the exertion it took to bend to remove his shoes. Removing these and the trousers took much longer than it should have. Leaving the pants in a pile at the foot of the steps, he began to slowly ascend the staircase in his briefs.

            Lois returned to the room and caught sight of her husband abandoning his hosting duties. 

“Peter, Stewie is still here. You know, it wouldn’t kill you to spend some time with your youngest child, or at least, you know, say goodnight to him like a loving father.” 

            Peter looked over his shoulder and spotted said youngest child standing in the middle of the living room. He sighed, climbed sluggishly to his feet, and made his way over to Stewie, whose cheek he reached out and patted.

“Stewie, you beautiful child, you.”

            His younger son stared with his best deadpan expression at Peter and promptly slapped his father’s hand away. 

“Uh, uh…Stewie, before you go…you, like, you want a beer of something?” 

“Stewie can’t drink and drive, Peter,” Lois interjected.

            Stewie smirked as the Fat Man’s mouth fell open, and his whole face took on the expression of a child who couldn’t believe he’d been denied the right to do something. He narrowed his eyes at his wife, and was clearly about to say something, but Stewie avoided a situation by patting his father companionably on the forearm.

            “Mother’s quite right, old man, and besides, I don’t really like Pawtucket Ale, anyway. To be quite truthful, I’m not much of a beer man at all. When I drink, it’s usually a crème de menthe, champagne on New Year’s, perhaps a nice red wine with dinner, or some Jack Daniels.”

“Jack Daniels?” Lois queried, a knowing look playing about her countenance.

            “Ah, well, once upon a time, I liked my jack in a box. Now I like it in a bottle,” Stewie said breezily, turning up the collar of his jacket in preparation of going outside and facing the autumnal chill that was probably present in the air now. 

            From there, his parents walked him to the front door. Lois expressed her disapproval that Brianne was being allowed to go on the Honor Society’s trip to Rome, Stewie did his best to belittle her concerns, touting the responsible nature of both Brianne and the school staff members going along on the trip, and in the end felt both a rush of exasperation with his mother when she still seemed more than a little wary, and also an undercurrent of keen pleasure, because it gave him the chance to be defiant, which he still reveled in, even at thirty years of age.

            In his car now, making the short drive home, he turned the radio over to a station that played the hits of the day, drumming his fingers along on the steering wheel, doing his best to keep the beat with the manic music of the latest trendiest club song that filled the car with its perky and madcap electronica sounds. He’d long ago abandoned shirtless all-male discos, but that didn’t change the fact that this kind of music would always be a pick-me-up for him. Besides, it was the ideal thing to listen to at that very moment, for the frenetic atmosphere of the song seemed the perfect soundtrack for what this family night had been like.

 

**SBSBSBSBSBSBSBS**

 

            “Where were you going?” asked the Other Stewie, once they had entered the time machine together, and before any of the dials or buttons had been touched to set their next destination. 

            Stewie shut the door behind them. He took a few seconds to stand with his eyes closed, breathing deeply in and out. Today was, without exception, the most hectic and nerve-wracking day he’d ever experienced. He then turned to his duplicate and raised his eyebrows inquiringly. 

“What do you mean?”

            “Well, when you ran out of patience with me and said it didn’t matter what I had to say because you were just going to erase the timeline I exist in, you made to inside our time machine here. Thing is, this was before you’d done anything else to the machine. Ergo, I don’t know where you think you were going, as you’ve already seen what the machine, in its current state, results in.”

            Stewie started.

            “Well, I was frustrated and wanted to get away from you, for one,” he admitted. “But I thought…well, you caught me almost at my breaking point. I don’t need to tell you how I was feeling. You’ve been there. So you’ll understand the desire to take a trip, that, while still stomach-churning because of the excessive time traveling, will take you to a cheerier destination. So sometimes…sometimes I go into the past. I was going to do that again. Relive happier times.”

            The Other Him looked unsurprised, but his eyes still telegraphed disapproval.

            “Yeah. I remember doing that, but I’m happy I caught you before you could go do it again.” 

            He paused, and when he spoke again, he stumbled when he addressed himself by his own name.

“Um, St-Stewie, before we do anything else, you need to listen to me. I want to share with you the knowledge that I have gained from being on travels you haven’t been on.”

“About bloody time,” Stewie remarked. “I kept asking you and asking you and kept getting squat for an answer.”

“I was _thinking_!” snapped his doppelganger. “I wasn’t planning on running into you like that, but it’s okay, it’ll be alright anyway.” The ever-so-slightly futuristic version of himself paused again, tilted his head, and looked at Stewie with piercing eyes. “We haven’t been doing anything to save him from dying. It’s us that killed him.”

            It was like being punched in the stomach. Stewie felt as if he’d gotten all the air knocked out of him. He literally staggered, forced to put out an arm and shift dramatically to the side, not wanting to slip and accidentally hit any of the buttons on the control panel behind him. He supported himself against the side of his machine with his hand as he looked at the Other Him with what he felt must be quite wild eyes. 

            “What?!”

            “Brian wasn’t dying. He would have been fine if we had left him alone. We just made it worse. Far, _far_ worse.”

            “But Brian’s a dog!” Stewie shouted. His head was spinning, struggling to take in what his copy had told him. “He’s…you know, pretty old for a dog. You’ve got a dog who’s fourteen, and he’s been really sick for days, it seemed obvious what was happening…a-and the vet! The vet said nothing could be done for him.”

            “The vet didn’t recognize what was ailing him because he was looking for canine illnesses. Either he missed the signs entirely, or the stupid man didn’t even realize that dogs can get the flu, too.”

            “The flu?” Stewie said a little numbly, because he didn’t know how to process what was he was being told. 

            The Other Stewie nodded. 

“He has the flu. That’s all. Now, some people _do_ die from the flu, but most do not, and Brian won’t, either, as long as we do _nothing_ to treat his illness beyond what you’d give a human in the situation.”

            “Give a human in the same situation? But Brian’s _not_ a human. Why would we treat him with the same things a person takes when they’ve got the flu?”

            A look of disgust that Stewie didn’t understand shaded his double’s features. It passed after a moment, and the Other Him regarded him sympathetically.

            “Because…Brian’s not…100% a dog. Listen, this is really going to gross you out, okay, even though we’ve, ya know, screwed a dog ourself… _selves_?” The Other Him chuckled weakly, then blanched a little and sighed. “Anyway, Brian has a human father. He’s, um, that farmer, Luke, from the puppy mill where Brian was born.”

“Eew,” said Stewie, unable to help himself. Then he repeated himself, this time with more intensity, fluttering his wrists out in front of him.“ _Eew_! But Biscuit was a dog! I mean, a _dog_ , dog! Not anthropomorphic- just a regular dumb ol’ bitch.”

            The Other Him smirked.

            “True enough. But Luke was a pretty dumb, sick, and unselective ol’ farmer, and I guess he got pretty desperate. Hell, who knows which other dogs the freak got it on with. More likely than not, he’s Jasper’s father, too. But anyway, it explains why Brian, although born looking like a dog, has numerous human attributes as well. Furthermore, Luke was 100% human, and Biscuit was 100% dog. But Brian was 50% dog, 50% human, and we’re 100% human, so that must have tipped the odds in Brianne’s favor of being born a human little girl.”

            Stewie was confused.

            “You lost me. Who the hell’s Brianne?” 

            To Stewie’s enhanced puzzlement, his doppelganger suddenly looked guilty and apprehensive. His eyes shifted from side to side and he chuckled awkwardly.

            “That was a bad example. I should have indicated the part Brian’s human side played in creating Dylan,” said The Other Him, worrying his lip after he finished speaking, and tenting his fingers together nervously.

Curiosity piqued, Stewie hesitated, debating for a few moments whether or not to push for his companion to tell him more about this mysterious Brianne person. But the other Stewie was looking at the slightly earlier version of himself as though bracing for something, while simultaneously entreating this earlier Stewie to let the apparent slip-up go by, and Stewie decided to oblige him. He was smart, after all. He had to trust that he knew what he was talking about.

            So he asked a different question instead.

            “How do you know all this?”

_To be continued…_


End file.
